Song-Time Is Over — Summary

Ledwidge’s speaker is saying goodbye to music and to the person listening, at least for now. The title and first lines announce that “Song-time” has ended. What replaces it is not silence exactly, but a restless burning: “A fire is burning in my heart, / I was ever a rover.” The speaker has always been a wanderer, and now a distant voice keeps calling him onward. Even the birds have stopped singing, as if the world itself has gone quiet while he listens to that summons. The repeated “Come” feels both inviting and unstoppable, like a pull he cannot ignore. The mood is melancholy but not despairing—there is affection in the farewell, mixed with the ache of leaving. It is a short lyric about the moment when the comfort of song gives way to the need to move on, and the reader feels the hush before departure.