How Beautiful You Are

The speaker recalls a rainy evening in Paris, when he and his companion had imagined themselves as deeply united. Their shared dream breaks when they meet a poor father and two children outside a brightly lit building. The family sees the companion as beautiful, but she reacts with dislike and wants them removed. The speaker moves from romantic closeness to shame, sadness, and finally bitterness.

The contrast between the “glittering” building and the family’s rags highlights differences in comfort and hardship. The family’s eyes communicate admiration and joy without needing many words, while the companion’s response suggests she sees them as an inconvenience. The child’s silent happiness is especially powerful: it seems to expose the speaker’s own discomfort and the couple’s distance from other people.

The speaker says he hates his companion, but this may express more than personal anger. Her reaction has shattered his belief that they understood one another, and his final claim that no one can truly know or love another sounds like a despairing conclusion rather than an objective truth. The poem leaves room to wonder whether he condemns only her response, or also his own failure to bridge the gap between them.