A man addresses Harriet with a passion that teeters between adoration and despair. Her loving look can calm his wildest inner storms; her gentle words are the only relief in a life he finds painfully bitter. Yet even as he tells her this, a darker note creeps in. His only grief, he says, is having known such perfect blessings—because the threat of losing them is unbearable.
The rest of the poem becomes a breathless plea. He imagines that winning a place in her affection demands suffering her scorn unto death, and he begs her not to be that kind of cold, proud figure. He describes his own body breaking down—pale cheek, racing breath, trembling limbs—as evidence of his torment. Rather than a cruel rejection he calls a “fatal cure,” he asks her to show a “nobler pride”: pity, even if she cannot love. The mood is intensely vulnerable, full of romantic anguish and a desperate, quivering hope.