The speaker admits he feels hollow now, drained of tears. But he recalls two moments when something like tears—their ghosts—did fall. First, a pack of twenty hounds surged past him, wild and joyful, a single creature of scent and noise in a sunlit field where hops once grew. Later, he walked from a shadowed tower into a warm April morning and watched young soldiers, country lads with ruddy faces, changing guard to the tune of “The British Grenadiers.” The music cut through the quiet, flooding him with truths so vivid and beautiful he’d never imagined them.
Those glimpses of intensity are gone now, the truths forgotten as soon as their beauty faded. What lingers is a dry ache: the memory of being moved almost to tears by something vital and fleeting, and the numb knowledge that he can no longer reach that feeling. The poem carries a quiet, wistful sadness—a sense of standing apart from one’s own past, haunted by the echo of feelings that once brimmed but never quite spilled over.