The speaker is addressing someone whose inner self feels like both water and flame. She asks this person to open their soul so she can soak in its quiet coolness, finding rest from weariness as if lying on a smooth ivory bed. But she doesn’t want only calm; she also wants the beloved’s flickering, fiery energy to enter her body and tighten her like a tuned string. From that charged state, she can go out into a dull, half-asleep world and wake it up, carrying the beauty the beloved has sparked in her. The mood is intimate and almost worshipful, mixing tenderness with a surge of creative power. It feels like a love poem about how one person’s presence can both soothe and ignite another.
The Giver of Stars — Summary
Hold your soul open for my welcoming. Let the quiet of your spirit bathe me With its clear and rippled coolness, That, loose-limbed and weary, I find rest, Outstretched upon your peace, as on a bed of ivory.
Let the flickering flame of your soul play all about me, That into my limbs may come the keenness of fire, The life and joy of tongues of flame, And, going out from you, tightly strung and in tune, I may rouse the blear-eyed world, And pour into it the beauty which you have begotten.