The poem's speaker asks her lover not to love her for any particular reason beyond love itself. For instance, she explains, she does not wish to be loved for the sake of her smile, her looks, or her way of speaking. Nor does she wish to be loved for having thoughts that resonate with her lover's own. Her reasoning, she explains, is that these individual characteristics are all fleeting. Since these features can change and disappear, a love based on them is itself liable to disappear.
Moreover, the speaker says, she doesn't wish to be loved in the form of pity. If love is based on one person comforting the other, then comfort might eventually come to outweigh love itself.
Finally, the speaker asks to be loved for love's sake, since this is the only way to ensure eternal love.
