A travelling pedlar meets someone weighed down by sadness and makes a strange bargain: give me the key to your heavy heart, and I’ll hand you a brighter key of dreams from my pack. The voice is part flirtation, part longing. There’s a feeling of roads about to split—his going south, the other’s north—and a brief, playful fantasy in which their serious older selves step aside and their younger ghosts kiss and sit together as twenty-two-year-olds. That impossible moment gives the poem its ache. By the final lines, the offer of escape and joy sounds almost too bright, too risky: “Take it. No, give it back!” The speaker wants connection and freedom at once, but can’t quite trust the exchange. The mood is wistful, haunting, and caught between playfulness and a deeper loneliness.
The Pedlar — Summary
Lend me, a little while, the key That locks your heavy heart, and I'll give you back — Rarer than books and ribbons and beads bright to see, This little Key of Dreams out of my pack.
The road, the road, beyond men's bolted doors, There shall I walk and you go free of me, For yours lies North across the moors, And mine South. To what sea ?
How if we stopped and let our solemn selves go by, While my gay ghost caught and kissed yours, as ghosts don't do, And by the wayside this forgotten you and I Sat, and were twenty-two ?
Give me the key that locks your tired eyes, And I will lend you this one from my pack, Brighter than coloured beads and painted books that make men wise Take it. No, give it back !