Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.
Lines 9-12
Life all around me here in the village:
Tragedy, comedy, valor and truth,
Courage, constancy, heroism, failure—
All in the loom, and oh what patterns!
- Now, the speaker reflects upon his life (when he was alive) in the village. (Remember that this poem is an epitaph, written by our speaker who is dead—see "In a Nutshell" and "Speaker" for more.)
- As it turns out, life (again, when he was alive) was quite something. It had all the major aspects of human existence: tragedy, comedy, heroism, failure—the works.
- Using a metaphor, the speaker says that life was a rich tapestry, it was "all in the loom."
- Now, a loom is a device used to make tapestries and rugs and such. The idea here is life was made up of many wonderful "threads" that created great "patterns" of experience. It doesn't look like it was all an easy life, but it was a full life.
Lines 13-14
Woodlands, meadows, streams and rivers—
Blind to all of it all my life long.
- It also featured some wonderful scenery. The speaker's life included a whole peaceful landscape, kind of like those motivational posters that people hang up on their office cubicles—sweet.
- What's sour, though, is that the speaker was blind to it all. Now, he's speaking figuratively again, here. He wasn't literally blind, he just didn't see the beauty that surrounded him. He missed all of it. Way to pay attention, dude.