Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.
Lines 41-44
And once more came they by:—alas! wherefore?
My sleep had been embroider'd with dim dreams;
My soul had been a lawn besprinkled o'er
With flowers, and stirring shades, and baffled beams:
- The figures returned again, but the speaker says that there really wasn't a point.
- Side note, Shmoopers: "wherefore" means "for what reason." And now you know the real meaning behind that oh-so-famous line from Romeo and Juliet.
- Back to Keats's speaker: he's wondering why these figures just had to visit again. He's a bit confused.
- He had been enjoying the most wonderful morning, having sleep "embroidered" with dreams—imagery alert. This description lets us know that the speaker really loves to sleep.
- Using another simile, Keats compares his sleeping soul to a lawn, covered in flowers and bits of shade and sunbeam.
- His soul was a happy summer day, he says, before Love, Ambition, and Poesy arrived to annoy him.
- They all stir up his soul and interrupt his laziness. They make him wake up and take action.
- And he really, really doesn't like it.
Lines 45-48
The morn was clouded, but no shower fell,
Tho' in her lids hung the sweet tears of May;
The open casement press'd a new-leaved vine,
Let in the budding warmth and throstle's lay;
- Here's some get more nature imagery, what with the clouds, the vine, and the "throstle," or song thrush.
- The speaker is still talking about how happy his soul was before the figures showed up.
- Continuing his simile from line 43, the speaker says that his soul was like a May morning, where the sky is cloudy and threatening to rain.
- The sky has its own figurative language going on. He compares the clouds to lids, and says that her lids hang drowsily with all the rain, but she doesn't open her eyes to let it fall to earth.
- There's some more personification for ya, Shmoopers.
- It sounds like the sky is just as lazy as the speaker, who is lounging in bed enjoying the sounds of nature and the warmth from the sun.
Lines 49-50
O Shadows! 'twas a time to bid farewell!
Upon your skirts had fallen no tears of mine.
- With this, our speaker's politely telling the figures: it's time to go. The speaker has a whole lotta nothing to return to doing.
- And he's no longer sad to see them leave—he's not shedding any sad tears.
- But he's also not shedding any happy tears. He's not feeling much of anything at all, really.
- The speaker is comfortably numb, preferring that state to any other, even those that would make him excited or happy.
- It sounds like Keats would've been a big fan of Pink Floyd