I Want It Pleaded All Its Life

I Want It Pleaded All Its Life - meaning Summary

Desire Pleading Beyond Death

The poem registers a single, persistent desire that the speaker wishes had been "pleaded" throughout life. The voice imagines that the wish — summarized as "I want" — remained central even when practical skill or social expectation confronted it, and still issued a final, plaintive breath after death. The speaker treats that last exhalation as a meaningful, deliberate plea directed toward Eternity. The poem thus compresses longing, regret, and a sense that authentic wants can outlast skill, life, and conventional closure, reaching beyond mortality toward the infinite.