Swinburne treats sorrow as a living creature, always in motion, never settling for long. It might pause briefly, as if hoping to find rest, but that hope never holds. The poem hints at a private, persistent ache: inside the heart, pain chews away like a weed in a dead riverbed or a rusty plow blade left in a barren field. These are dry, hollow images—nothing grows here, nothing heals.
The speaker suggests that we all try to tear free from sorrow’s grip. Hearts strain at the chain, desperate to break the link that binds yesterday’s hurt to tomorrow’s dread. Yet the final lines deliver a quiet, devastating truth: everything in the world eventually changes or vanishes, except for sorrow itself. The mood is weary and resigned, not angry. There is no dramatic outburst, just a low, steady recognition that grief is the one constant, a shadow that refuses to lift.