The speaker talks to love as if it were a person who is both protective and smothering. Love’s tenderness covers her, but it also lulls her into a dazed half-state, neither fully asleep nor fully alive. That care quickly turns into pressure: love scolds, demands submission, and offers quiet beds she dreads. The mood is dreamy yet claustrophobic, mixing affection with fear of being trapped. Even when love points to two bleak roads, she clings to their narrow, flowered lane. The nursery-rhyme counting and bluebell sounds create a childlike pull against all that heavy tenderness. In the end, the longing to run into the sun and be children again is a wish to escape adult sorrow and love’s hovering shadow.
Covering Wings — Summary
Love! Love! Your tenderness, Your beautiful, watchful ways Grasp me, fold me, cover me; I lie in a kind of daze, Neither asleep nor yet awake, Neither a bud nor flower. Brings to-morrow Joy or sorrow, The black or the golden hour?
Love! Love! You pity me so! Chide me, scold me--cry, “Submit--submit! You must not fight!” What may I do, then? Die? But, oh, my horror of quiet beds! How can I longer stay! “One to be ready, Two to be steady, Three to be off and away!”
Darling heart--your gravity! Your sorrowful, mournful gaze-- “Two bleached roads lie under the moon, At the parting of the ways.” But the tiny, tree-thatched, narrow lane, Isn’t it yours and mine? The blue-bells ring Hey, ding-a-ding, ding! And buds are thick on the vine.
Love! Love! grief of my heart! As a tree droops over a stream You hush me, lull me, darken me, The shadow hiding the gleam. Your drooping and tragical boughs of grace Are heavy as though with rain. Run! Run! Into the sun! Let us be children again.