The speaker retraces the places a beloved woman has touched, and each one becomes sacred. He kisses the spot where she broke a rose at dawn, notices the ring-marks of her pattens on the stile, and feels that anything her eyes rest on—hedge, thorn, oak—grows dearer. On a hill he sits for hours, remembering her picking thyme and hiding the sprigs against her breast, near a mole that gleamed like a diamond to him; his eye burned and his heart turned to stone with the force of his feeling. Finally, a small green spot where cowslips grow, canopied by an oak, is the dearest place on earth—because there, alone with him, she spoke her love. The mood is one of rapt, almost worshipful attention, turning everyday rural details into quiet monuments of desire and memory.
Where She Told Her Love — Summary
I saw her crop a rose Right early in the day, And I went to kiss the place Where she broke the rose away And I saw the patten rings Where she oer the stile had gone, And I love all other things Her bright eyes look upon. If she looks upon the hedge or up the leafing tree, The whitethorn or the brown oak are made dearer things to me.
I have a pleasant hill Which I sit upon for hours, Where she cropt some sprigs of thyme And other little flowers; And she muttered as she did it As does beauty in a dream, And I loved her when she hid it On her breast, so like to cream,
Near the brown mole on her neck that to me a diamond shone Then my eye was like to fire, and my heart was like to stone.
There is a small green place Where cowslips early curled, Which on Sabbath day I trace, The dearest in the world. A little oak spreads oer it, And throws a shadow round, A green sward close before it, The greenest ever found:
There is not a woodland nigh nor is there a green grove, Yet stood the fair maid nigh me and told me all her love.