The speaker is addressing someone who has been gone a long time—someone once close enough to teach her “the flaming utterance” of passionate words. Now those words feel distant and slowed, as if the feeling behind them has faded. She had made a kind of peace with loss; her pain had “flowered” into silence. But just now, in the rain, she senses this person returning: an anxious footstep, pleading eyes shadowing her window. The visitor may be a ghost, a memory, or a living person from the past, but the effect is unsettling. The poem creates an eerie, grief-laden mood, full of longing and reluctance. The speaker is not simply glad to see this shadow-figure; she asks why it has stirred her hard-won quiet, as if the past is pressing back in.
Shadow-Bound — Summary
You whom the shadows beckoned Long and long ago, Who taught me the flaming utterance Of words, now strange and slow On my lips that loved them Long — Oh, long ago . . .
Why have you stirred the silence That flowered from my pain? Just now your anxious footstep Sounded above the rain; Just now your eyes, beseeching, Shadowed my windowpane.