Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.
"Except a spout of blood on the hot land;
For it was hottest summer; and I know
I wonder'd how the fire, while I should stand,
"And burn, against the heat, would quiver so,
Yards above my head; thus these matters went;
Which things were only warnings of the woe
"That fell on me. [...]
- Blood spurted out of Mellyagraunce onto the ground.
- Guenevere remembers that it was summertime, so the ground was as hot as his blood.
- But the heat reminds her of the fire in which Gauwaine and the others want to burn her as punishment for adultery.
- She imagines the fire quivering in the summer heat, and she imagines that all of these things are warnings of more bad stuff to come.