The speaker begins with a remembered glimpse of dawn over Mitylene, a dark island whose town looks like broken shadows and whose morning carries a foreign bird’s song. Now he stands in familiar fields at twilight, surrounded by thrush, lark, and rivers among hills he considers fairer than that distant place. The scenery should feel like home and peace, but it doesn’t. Something voiceless keeps calling him and stirring old echoes in his mind. Even in the country he would choose, he can find neither Peace nor Love, and when the south-east wind blows low, all rest disappears. The poem creates a mood of quiet, unsatisfied longing: beauty is everywhere, but the speaker remains drawn toward some unnamed absence, as if the landscape itself is asking him to remember or seek something he cannot fully reach.
The Lure — Summary
I saw night leave her halos down On Mitylene's dark mountain isle, The silhouette of one fair town Like broken shadows in a pile. And in the farther dawn I heard The music of a foreign bird.
In fields of shady angles now I stand and dream in the half dark: The thrush is on the blossomed bough, Above the echoes sings the lark, And little rivers drop between Hills fairer than dark Mitylene.
Yet something calls me with no voice And wakes sweet echoes in my mind; In the fair country of my choice Nor Peace nor Love again I find, Nor anything of rest I know When south-east winds are blowing low.