This is another one I like more with each reading. I loved the octet right off the bat. I initially stumbled a bit metrically in the sestet (on the use of "hold me" and "told me" as feminine rhymes in lines 10 and 12), but didn't have that problem the second time through.
After several readings I gather, like Janice, that the narrator severed the relationship. The sestet remains somewhat mysterious and elusive to me. (I think intentionally, and effectively, so.) But I'm thinking N's time "alone" at that old stone house in the fog, so haunting now (lines 9-11), occurred after the break-up, and that N wanted to initiate a reconciliation but said nothing. If that's so, then there's extra sting to N's recollection of the lover's comment that N always closed doors quietly when leaving (lines 11-12). It refers not just to the lover's original meaning, but also to N's failure to reach out after sending him away--something that can't be remedied now. My take, anyway.
A lovely, moving poem, and one of my favorites here.
Last edited by Bruce McBirney; 04-05-2009 at 01:32 PM.
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