The Walk in the Woods — Summary

The speaker doesn’t trust what comes after death. “High Heaven is insecure,” she says, so she asks for her paradise now, while she and her lover can still hold each other. She calls him into a brake — a wild, sheltered patch of woods — where she can watch him sleep and wake. That ordinary intimacy is enough for her. The line “for Mortality’s poor sake” is the heart of the poem: because they are mortal, their time is short, and that makes earthly pleasure urgent rather than trivial. The mood is tender, close, and quietly defiant. There is no grand religious comfort here, only the warmth of a shared present. It reads like a love poem that keeps an eye on death, savoring what can be touched while it lasts.