The speaker imagines the person he loves gathering his work after he dies. He tells her to include both the poems that disguised her as mythological figures and the ones that openly praised her. But then he insists that none of this poetry belongs only to them. The beauty he took from her, and from the landscapes they knew, has been turned into something for other people. Their private kisses and growing passion become a kind of navigational chart for future lovers, helping them find their way. There is tenderness here, but also a quiet, elegiac acceptance: he is grateful to her as his muse, yet he gives the best of what they shared away to the world. The final line — “She was and he wrote” — is both a proud summary and a slightly lonely epitaph.
The Debt — Summary
When I am dead and you gather up my poems, Put them all in, all those that speak of you, Those that glanced at you in sundry disguises, Ariadne, Daphne and the nameless nymph, The flower-bright queen who ruled a king in China, And the country-girl that early lost her love. Bind up with them the frank and honest sonnets, The open songs, the unashamed odes, That spoke straight to you and told that I loved you, Described your beauty or called you by name. These are not ours ; for what I took of beauty Belongs to our fellows for whom I write. The traces I have left on hill-top and valley Were made of the world and belong to the world ; But more than half of the loveliness I captured Was yours at first and now is the world's. Our first hidden kisses and unskilled embraces And the fierier love whereto we attained
Are lines on the chart whereby dreaming lovers Shall steer their hearts till the end of the world. When we are dead and our ashes are scattered, Let them say of us : She was and he wrote.