Early one May morning, a solitary speaker slips away while no one is looking. He has burned his letters and darned his socks—quiet, methodical rituals of severing ties. The air is perfectly still; not even the weathercocks stir. As he walks through the town, he hears a brook running in the gardens and notices how the mud has dried sweetly in the sun. A gate bangs, and a shepherd’s casual “Fine morning, sir” briefly breaks the silence, but it can’t reach the speaker’s inward distance. He is leaving behind youth, love, and misery—an old life he calls a kind of captivity. Only the past, he says, smells sweet; it is dead but it doesn’t rush away like everything else. And yet he cannot return to it. The refrain “I’m bound away for ever” repeats like a quiet, determined thought, giving the whole poem a mood of tender finality—part escape, part goodbye.
Early One Morning — Summary
EARLY one morning in May I set out, And nobody I knew was about. I'm bound away for ever, Away somewhere, away for ever.
There was no wind to trouble the weathercocks. I had burnt my letters and darned my socks.
No one knew I was going away, I thought myself I should come back some day.
I heard the brook through the town gardens run. O sweet was the mud turned to dust by the sun.
A gate banged in a fence and banged in my head. "A fine morning, sir." a shepherd said.
I could not return from my liberty, To my youth and my love and my misery.
The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet, The only sweet thing that is not also fleet. I'm bound away for ever, Away somewhere, away for ever.