The speaker gives herself exactly one cigarette’s length to remember a lost love. As she sits by the fire, with jazz playing and shadows moving on the wall, she lets the “vision of you” surface—beautiful, dreamlike, but temporary. When the cigarette ends, the memory must end too; she says farewell almost formally, as if closing a door. She can forget the details of the face, its color and features, but the words and smiles have stayed with her. The final image captures the mood: this brief act of remembering is like sunlight still glowing on a hill after the sun has already set—a last warmth and beauty after the relationship is over. The poem feels intimate, smoky, and bittersweet, full of deliberate restraint and quiet grief.
Unnamed Sonnets IV — Summary
Only until this cigarette is ended, A little moment at the end of all, While on the floor the quiet ashes fall, And in the firelight to a lance extended, Bizarrely with the jazzing music blended, The broken shadow dances on the wall, I will permit my memory to recall The vision of you, by all my dreams attended. And then adieu,--farewell!--the dream is done. Yours is a face of which I can forget The color and the features, every one, The words not ever, and the smiles not yet; But in your day this moment is the sun Upon a hill, after the sun has set.