A speaker promises to craft a life with someone dear, building it from the simplest, most beautiful materials: birdsong, starlight, green forest days, and blue sea days. The tone is gentle and full of devotion. He’ll make her brooches and toys—not from gold, but from the intangible moments they can share. The palace he imagines isn’t stone; it’s time spent together in nature. Then the poem shifts indoors, to a shared home by a bright river, where she has her own space and can keep herself “white” in the pure elements of rain and dew. There’s an intimate, almost secret quality to it, as if they are the only people in the world. The final stanza deepens the privacy: the music that matters most is a rare song only he remembers and only she admires, linked to a road and a roadside fire—a memory only they understand. The mood is wistful, tender, and quietly enchanted, as love becomes its own secluded, cherished world.
Romance — Summary
I WILL make you brooches and toys for your delight Of bird-song at morning and star-shine at night. I will make a palace fit for you and me, Of green days in forests and blue days at sea.
I will make my kitchen, and you shall keep your room, Where white flows the river and bright blows the broom, And you shall wash your linen and keep your body white In rainfall at morning and dewfall at night.
And this shall be for music when no one else is near, The fine song for singing, the rare song to hear! That only I remember, that only you admire, Of the broad road that stretches and the roadside fire.