The speaker imagines two beautiful beings — perhaps lovers, perhaps personified ideals — coming together in a moment of pure, naked encounter. Everything in that instant feels heightened: the earth sweet with a kind of rapturous cry, the air bright and swirling, the atmosphere thick with soft, dizzy laughter. There’s an almost drunken joy, but it’s also fragile. The lines “Veiling all that may befall / After -- after --” hint that this ecstasy is fleeting and will give way to sorrow.
The second stanza lingers in the aftermath. The place where beauty met still trembles; the winds are scented, the air soft with memory, holding glimmers of light and scraps of laughter. Yet what remains is not just sweetness — it’s the absence, the tears that come with time’s passing. The poem creates a mood both sensuous and elegiac, as if the speaker is caught between cherishing a perfect moment and mourning its inevitable loss.