A woman about to marry feels her lover's hands and mouth and hears her name spoken like a prayer, yet the moment is shadowed by what she must leave behind. Her mother's voice rises up, accusing her of not loving her enough and of going away. The speaker then turns to a friend she will no longer see, a woman with hair the color of sunburnt grasses; together they will not go looking for the moonlit hills they once imagined. She had hoped love would bring beauty, splendor, and lost delights, but the poem ends in quiet evening light, with only willows dipping leaves into water. The mood is intimate and elegiac: tender toward the future but full of grief for the people and possible lives left behind. The betrothal feels less like pure joy than a quiet departure.
Betrothed — Summary
You have put your two hands upon me, and your mouth, You have said my name as a prayer. Here where trees are planted by the water I have watched your eyes, cleansed from regret, And your lips, closed over all that love cannot say.
My mother remembers the agony of her womb And long years that seemed to promise more than this. She says, "You do not love me, You do not want me, You will go away."
In the country whereto I go I shall not see the face of my friend Nor her hair the color of sunburnt grasses; Together we shall not find The land on whose hills bends the new moon In air traversed of birds.
What have I thought of love? I have said, "It is beauty and sorrow." I have thought that it would bring me lost delights, and splendor As a wind out of old time. . .
But there is only the evening here, And the sound of willows Now and again dipping their long oval leaves in the water.