Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.
I dared not think, as I was wont to do,
Sometimes, upon my beauty; if I had
"Held out my long hand up against the blue,
And, looking on the tenderly darken'd fingers,
Thought that by rights one ought to see quite through,
"There, see you, where the soft still light yet lingers,
Round by the edges; what should I have done,
If this had joined with yellow spotted singers,
"And startling green drawn upward by the sun?
But shouting, loosed out, see now! all my hair,
And trancedly stood watching the west wind run
"With faintest half-heard breathing sound: why there
I lose my head e'en now in doing this;
But shortly listen: In that garden fair
"Came Launcelot walking; this is true, the kiss
Wherewith we kissed in meeting that spring day,
I scarce dare talk of the remember'd bliss,
"When both our mouths went wandering in one way,
And aching sorely, met among the leaves;
Our hands being left behind strained far away.
- The speaker says that in that moment in the garden, she didn't dare think about how beautiful she was. Maybe the thought of her own beauty is what would drive her "mad"?
- She imagines what would have happened if she had even held out her own hand to admire the outline of her fingers against the sky.
- If she had looked at her own beauty in the context of the beautiful spring day, her beauty would have joined together with "the yellow spotted singers" (the singing thrushes – go to the "Best of the Web" section for a photo of a wood thrush), the green of the grass, the light of the sun, and the "west wind."
- If she had looked at her own beauty, something in her would have been cut loose so that she would have been "shouting" or almost in a "trance."
- She loses control over her speech as she recalls the sensation, and says that even "now," at the trial, she "lose[s her] head" thinking about it.
- She gets back to her story, telling the judges that they'll only have to "listen shortly" because she's almost done.
- While she was in that crazy mood, Launcelot came into the garden.
- She insists that "this is true."
- They kissed in the garden!
- She doesn't like to talk about it because it was so awesome and "bliss[ful]."
- She describes the kiss as almost an accident: their "mouths" just kind of "wander[ed]" together. Whoops.
- She says their "hands" were "left behind." Does she mean that their hands were, or weren't, busy while they were smooching?