The speaker looks back at two very different encounters with love. As a boy, he was overwhelmed by his first love—so much so that he describes it as a delirium of joy he hadn’t even imagined possible. Now, as a man, love arrives again, but he is no longer that innocent boy. He has become serious, shaped by thoughts of life and death and by all the changes that come with maturity. This time love does not sweep him away into happiness. Instead, it makes the world feel dark and strange. The poem’s mood is quiet and unsettled: there is wonder, but also weight. Love in later life is not less powerful; it’s more complicated, because it comes with an awareness of time and loss that youth never had. The speaker seems to feel both moved and unnerved by how different love has become.
Dark and Strange — Summary
When first Love came, then was I but a boy Swept with delirium of undreamt joy. Now Love comes to a man serious with change Of life and death--and makes the world dark and strange.