Lines 55-62 Summary

Lines 55-57

I have kept hidden in the instep arch
Of an old cedar at the waterside
A broken drinking goblet like the Grail 

• It's time for the speaker to let us in on a little secret. He's been to this place before, and he's left us a surprise: "a broken drinking goblet." Gee, thanks?
• The fact that the goblet's broken reminds us of those broken dishes we found beneath the tree in line 42. Maybe the speaker came here as a child? Maybe this house that is no more a house was once his?
• In any case, he hid the goblet in the "instep arch / Of an old cedar" right next to the brook. Here's the weird part: an instep arch is a part of a human foot. So once again, he's personifying a piece of nature—in this case, a tree. 
• The goblet may be broken, but don't worry, it's not junk. In fact, our speaker describes it as "like the Grail." Simile alert. 
• Just to keep you on your toes, he's capitalized the world. That should be a big tip that this is an important cultural allusion.
  He's referring to the Holy Grail—you know, the cup that Jesus supposedly drank from in the Last Supper? It's referenced a ton throughout literature, but it made a big splash in Arthurian legends, as the object of many a knight's quest.
• Quest. Hmm. So maybe that's what this poem has been all about—we've been on a grail quest, and we didn't even know it.
• Our destination and our destiny is to get our hands on the grail the speaker has left for us. 
• Since this is such an Important Cultural Allusion, we think it's worth a little research to drill down deep through the layers of the Holy Grail onion. Check out what Shmoop has to offer.

Lines 58-60

Under a spell so the wrong ones can't find it,
So can't get saved, as Saint Mark says they mustn't.
(I stole the goblet from the children's playhouse.)

• The speaker has left the goblet under a spell, which is yet another way in which he's reserved this journey exclusively for us, his audience. 
• We're not "the wrong ones," see? We've been initiated. We've completed the quest. We're in.
• But what makes someone a wrong one? To figure that out, we've got to do a little digging on this Saint Mark, guy. After all, according to our speaker, Saint Mark believes that the "wrong ones" shouldn't be allowed to be saved by finding the grail. 
• This Saint Mark he's referencing here is the Mark—of the gospels. In this context, we think he's alluding to Chapter 4 of the Gospel of Mark, in which Jesus tells his followers that only the truly good can see and hear his stories and understand the true word of God. The rest of the world only understands the word as parables, which means they can't achieve salvation. 
• The last of these lines gives us the scoop on where this goblet really came from—the children's playhouse. And yeah, dude stole it.

Lines 61-62

Here are your waters and your watering place.
Drink and be whole again beyond confusion. 

• The speaker is in full-on preacher mode for these two last lines. Now he's making a declaration. The whole poem has built up to this revelation, and it's a doozy. 
• He tells us that we have arrived at our "waters" and our "watering place." What's more, we finally get to "drink and be whole again beyond confusion."
• Let's break this down. Throughout the poem, water has been depicted as a source of comfort, life, and salvation. So here we get the sense that we're finally achieving those things, in some sense, by drinking the water from the brook with the broken goblet he's left for us. 
• And as we drink, we'll be whole again. There's a sense of healing here. 
• We'll also finally move beyond confusion—which comes as a welcome relief after this confusing poem, if Shmoop may say so.
• In fact, these waters and this watering place are starting to sound downright miraculous. Which figures. As the grail legend goes, drinking from the cup can give you eternal salvation, and even immortal life. 
• But we can't forget that this goblet is a broken plaything, discarded ages ago by children who have long since grown up. Sure, this ending sounds miraculous and wonderful, but it's tinged with a sense of loss, too. 
• However you interpret these last few lines, it's clear that the speaker is hammering home the themes of time, loss, memory, and the idea that we can pass these things on. The goblet that was once his is yours. As are the waters and the watering place.
• Maybe, in our most confusing moments, there's comfort in the knowledge that someone, somewhere (our poet maybe?) has been right where we're standing—and just as lost. But he knows the way home.