The Song of Wandering Aengus Love Quotes

By the speaker's description of the girl in these lines, we can guess that she's pretty beautiful. She's "glimmering" and she has "apple blossom" in her hair. Who can resist apple blossoms, right? This marks the moment in the poem when the speaker falls in love.

These lines give us a sense both of the seductiveness and elusiveness of the glimmering girl. She's flirting with Aengus (why else would she call his name?), but at the same time, she doesn't hang around. She disappears through the "brightening air." Part of the reason the speaker becomes so obsessed with this girl is because she's so elusive. She's there and then in a flash—poof—she's gone. Don't we always want what we can't have?

This speaker is so obsessed, all he can think about is finding his elusive love and kissing her and holding her hands. The fact that the speaker's spent his whole life looking for this girl so he can kiss and hold her gives us a sense of just how deep his love is. He may have only seen her for a second, but he's fallen head over heels.

Here the speaker imagines walking with his love among the "long dappled grass" when he finds her, and spending all of his time (and in fact, all of time) with her. The image of "plucking" the silver apples and golden apples suggests the idea of nourishment. We eat apples, after all. So the apples here can be read to suggest that the speaker will be nourished by being reunited with his love. The references to the "moon" and "sun" also indicate the passage of time. The moon signifies night, and the sun day. The speaker wants to spend the rest of his nights and days with his beautiful, glimmering girl.