"I'm Like All Lovers" is a poem by Australian poet Lesbia Harford. It was written in 1917, though first published in the poet's collection The Poems of Lesbia Harford in 1941 under the title "Poems XIV", and later in other Australian poetry anthologies.
Contents
Outline
A woman, the poet, speaks plainly to her man demanding that he ask no more of her than she asks of him, noting that she is free and so should he be, and that it is her love that sets him free, as long as he loves the woman in her. A very proto-feminist poem.
Analysis
In his commentary on the poem in 60 Classic Australian Poems Geoff Page called the poem "curiously both modern and traditional." He also noted that in "1917 it may well have been ahead of its time (especially in Australia), but it has already outlived that time and promises to be around for quite a while yet".
Further publications
The Poems of Lesbia Harford edited by Drusilla Modjeska and Marjorie Pizer, 1985
The New Oxford Book of Australian Verse edited by Les Murray, Oxford University Press, 1986
The Oxford Book of Australian Love Poems edited by Jennifer Strauss, 1993
Australian Verse : An Oxford Anthology edited by John Leonard, Oxford University Press, 1998
Hell and After : Four Early English-language Poets of Australia edited by Les Murray, Carcanet 2005
60 Classic Australian Poems edited by Geoff Page, University of NSW Press, 2009
The Puncher & Wattmann Anthology of Australian Poetry edited by John Leonard, Puncher & Wattmann, 2009
100 Australian Poems of Love and Loss edited by Jamie Grant, Grant Hardie, 2011
Selected Poems edited by Gerald Murnane, Text Publishing, 2023