Eternal Love

          People fall in and out of love throughout a lifetime. They choose who to love forever and hope that the other individual felt the same way. When they do find a partner that feels the same way about them as they do about that person, they have found their true love or eternal love. The song, "All of Me"  by John Legend can be connected to the poems What Is True by Ben Kopel, and Stop All The Clocks by W.H. Auden. All three pieces share a common theme of Eternal Love.
          Listening to music is a daily activity all people partake in at some point in life. Today, John Legend's song, "All of Me" has been ranked in the top forty musical compositions of 2013. In his song, he talks about how much he loves his partner. He states, "All of me, Loves all of you, Love your curves and all your edges, All your perfect imperfections." In the lyrics he says that he loves his partner with all of his heart and soul and that he doesn't see her weight of imperfections as a problem. He loves his partner with all his might. He also states towards the end of the song, "You're my end and my beginning, Even when I lose I'm winning." These last few lines tell his listeners that he truly loves his partner. When he says, "You're my end and my beginning," he means that his partner is his reason for living. His partner is the reason that he gets up in the morning and when they pass on, he will too pass on figuratively.
          "One must be one to ever be two and if you were a day I'd find a way to live through you." Ben Kopel wrote the poem. Similarly to John Legend's song, Kopel writes about how people in a relationship need to love themselves before they can ever love someone else or be a couple. He compares his loved one to a day. In doing so, he gives readers the impression that he lives each day with them or through their memory. In this poem, readers understand that Kopel does not have to be talking about his partner, but could be talking about any loved one.
          In relation to Kopel's poem, W.H. Auden's poem, Stop All The Clocks, the author writes about a deceased loved one. He states, "He was my North, my South, my East, and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song." Auden states how important his loved one was to him. In the words he uses, readers form the impression that this loved one was his whole world. "To the world you may be just one person, but to just one person, you may be the world." -Bill Wilson. Wilson's quote can easily be compared to Auden's poem. From the impression readers get, Auden lost his whole world when his loved one passed. Wilson's quote states that one person may just be one person on a big spectrum, but on a small scale among a small group of people, one individual may be inspiration or motivation to keep going.
          This past August, my Uncle Steve lost his two year battle to Lung Cancer. Being that he was a young 53-year-old, and non-smoker, his battle was extremely difficult to come to terms with for my family. All three pieces I mentioned, spoke about eternal love. A true example of eternal love is my Aunt and Uncle. When my Uncle Steve passed, I realized that my Aunt was not a wreck because she lived and continues to live each day through him and their children. Everyone has a different definition for the meaning of eternal love. John Legend, Ben Kopel, and W.H. Auden share the definition of eternal love being the love of a loved one for all of time. While I agree with them, my definition is my Aunt Stella and Uncle Steve's love for each other.