Words, in Edward Thomas's poem, turn out to be the least of what passes between two people. The speaker listens, understands exactly what was meant ("Is plain"), and then looks up to find the eyes saying something else: "more wise, / More dark, / And far different." The opening lines move quietly from what is said to what is meant beneath it. The rest of the poem tries to name that deeper meaning. It does so with a picture of a lark rather than an argument.
The picture is an odd one. Larks are traditionally birds of morning and bright, easy joy, but Thomas's lark "Loves dust / And nestles in it / The minute / Before he must / Soar in lone flight." "Nestles" is a tender, almost domestic verb, and its object is the lowest stuff on earth. Once the bird rises it shrinks, and the description grows stranger: "a black star," "A mote / Of singing dust / Afloat / Above," something that "dreams / And sheds no light." A star that is black, dust that sings, a height that illuminates nothing. The bird is still made of the dust it has left. Rising does not cancel where it came from.
That is the poem's real subject, and the last two lines say it flatly: "I know your lust / Is love." The verb is "is," not "becomes" or "leads to." Lust is not the ground love climbs away from. It is the same thing seen from another angle. The "dark" in the beloved's eyes and the "black star" of the lark belong together, so the love described here is shadowed and solitary ("lone flight") rather than radiant. It dreams, but it explains nothing. The speaker claims knowledge ("I know") exactly where the spoken words had only been "plain," as if the eyes were a more reliable language than speech.
The form carries the argument. Most lines are only two or three syllables long, so the poem moves in small, hesitant steps, with dashes after "mean" and "seems" that interrupt the speaker mid-thought. The rhymes are scattered rather than patterned, arriving at uneven distances: eyes with wise, lark with dark, flight with light, mote with afloat. The effect is of a mind feeling its way toward a conclusion rather than reciting a set stanza. One sound chain matters most. "Dust" appears twice and rhymes with "must" and finally "lust," so the word for desire is tied by ear to the bird's earthbound beginning and to the pressure of "he must / Soar." Meanwhile "love," the last word, rhymes with "above," four lines earlier, where the bird hangs in the air. Lust sounds like dust and love sounds like height, and the closing lines force the two together.
The line lengths work as a picture too. "Soar in lone flight" is one of the longest lines, the bird at full stretch. Then comes "So far," and the lines contract: "A mote," "Afloat," "Above." On the page the lark visibly dwindles. "Seems" and "dreams" echo "mean," quietly suggesting that what we see from the ground (a black speck, a beloved's glance) is an appearance that needs interpreting.
The body is present but kept in its place. "With your cheeks and hair" sits between dashes, a brief physical detail slipped into the middle of a sentence about meaning. The poem notices the face, then moves past it to what looks out of it.
What makes the poem significant is how much it does in so few words. It refuses to split desire from tenderness, or body from spirit, and it does so without sentimentality. The compliment is an unsettling one, since it tells the beloved that her desire is love and that this love gives no comfort or light. Thomas is generally remembered for plain, quiet language, and this poem fits that reputation while ending on an image, the singing speck of dust, that stays in the mind.