In bed, hidden under the covers, the speaker drifts into a strange, tender dream. Her eyes become lovers standing on the hill of her head, looking out over a beautiful, fertile landscape of red-brown fields and green hedges. She senses sweet water feeding the land and hears a mill churning nearby on her right. The dream feels peaceful, lush, and full of quiet life. Then she wakes with a sharp, breathless start and understands what the sound really was: the steady beat of her partner’s heart beside her. The poem moves from a private inner world of growth and beauty to the simple, close reality of two bodies lying together. The mood is intimate and a little dazed, as though the boundary between dreaming and waking has just dissolved. There is comfort in that discovery, but also a quiet intensity, as though the beloved’s heartbeat is the engine behind the speaker’s whole imagined landscape, turning beneath her sleep and bringing her back to the room.
The Mill — Summary
I HID beneath the covers of the bed, And dreamed my eyes were lovers, On a hill that was my head.
They looked upon the loveliest country I have seen, Great fields of red-brown earth hedged round with green.
In these enclosures I could see The high perfection of fertility,
I knew there were sweet waters near to feed the land, I heard the churning of a mill on my right hand,
I woke to breathlessness with a quick start, And found my mill the beating of your heart.