A LOVE SONG FOR LUCINDA

Love
Is a ripe plum
Growing on a purple tree.
Taste it once
And the spell of its enchantment
Will never let you be.

Love
Is a bright star
Glowing in far Southern skies.
Look too hard
And its burning flame
Will always hurt your eyes.

Love
Is a high mountain
Stark in a windy sky.
If you
Would never lose your breath
Do not climb too high.

TEXTUAL ANALYSIS – A love song for Lucinda

The poem “A love song for Lucinda” was written by Langston Hughes.
Just considering the title, the intelligent reader finds some curiosity that pushes him/her to make a sense to the speaker’s point of view. Moreover he/she makes conjectures about the poem’s content. The title makes it clear that the text is a song and more precisely a love song addressed to a privileged recipient, whose name is Lucinda. The reader may associate to the lady's name the idea of light and therefore something able to be a direction or a guide preventing to get lost. 
Considering layout, a careful observation makes the reader understand the poem is organised into three stanzas of six lines each. It is written in free verse. All lines begins with a capital letter. There is no regular rhyme scheme and the lines vary in length.
The reading experience allows the reader to discover each stanza performs a different function and has different meanings, that the reader must find if he/she wants to understand the poem.
In the first stanza, the poet compares love to "a ripe plum", which seems to have magical qualities because anyone who tastes it will be forever enchanted by its flavour. The idea of enchantment suggests a state removed from reality, implying in turn that love can be misleading. The word “ripe” means that one is ready that particular moment of life. He/she is ready to fall in love. Love is like an addiction. It is so good that once you have experienced it, you must surrender to it.
In the second stanza, L. Hughes compares love to a bright star that, if looked at too hard, may hurt you. Consequently love is something that may blind you. If you focus on it too hard, you can get hurt.
Finally, in the third stanza, the poet compares love to a high mountain. If you would never lose your breath, do not climb too high. Taking it on will take all the endurance you have. So the poet personifies the feeling of love with the use of several metaphors concerning the natural world. The meaning of the poem is meant to express the force and power of love. Therefore each stanza compares love to a specific feeling evoked for the person falls in love. The most important stanza is the third, which is different from the others stanzas for the use of the personal subject pronoun “you”. It has a personal value, which means “you”, but also an impersonal value. So the intelligent reader should understand that the poet addresses somebody who is both a personal relationship, but at the same time it acquires a general connotation and this is possible thanks to a very intelligent device, the use of the subject pronoun “you”.
A poetic device exploited by the poet is the current use of the refrain “Love” that opens every stanza of the poem. It goes without saying that the speaking voice wants to stick the refrain into the reader's mind because it is the message he wants to focus on. The poem seems to refer to the five senses: taste, sight and touch. As for figures of speech, there are a lot of enjambements, as well as the use of punctuation marked by the presence of some full stops at the end of some lines that are meant to warn the intelligent reader that he must pause and proceed slowly in reading. In my opinion the poet writes the poem for Lucinda because he wants to talk to her about love through an extended metaphor, where each stanza presents an aspect of love. Therefore the poet tells her that if she is not willing to risk something, she cannot live a passionate love.
So the major theme, or general message, is that love is something wonderful and passionate that happens to everyone in life sooner or later, but it can hurt.