Each stanza begins with “After,” and that word carries the whole mood: the speaker is standing on the far side of effort, love, beauty, and sorrow, naming what remains. Wind dies down into peace and night; the close ties of family and nesting give way to flight; a hawk’s high, wild stillness is answered by the trembling heart of a thrush. Bloom and leaf fall into rain on a nest, and splendour and grief settle into rest. The final movement follows hills and distant light until even those fade into cloud, a first star, and dreams.
It does not feel bitter or defeated. The repeated rhythm makes it gentle, almost like a lullaby or a slow breath after exertion. The speaker seems to accept that every bright or difficult thing has its afterwards, and that rest is not empty but soft, vast, and full of quiet possibility.