In these six lines, the speaker addresses Minna and pictures her mind as a small, secret pastel—a delicate colored sketch fixed in a “posture of rigid grief.” The colors do not spread freely; they “huddle together,” producing a “stunted, aching lyric,” as if her inner life is muted and wounded but still intensely tender. The mood is one of fragile intimacy, as though something beautiful and private is being watched just before it disappears.
That disappearance comes in the final lines. The speaker calls this state a “frail-flowered moment preceding reality,” like a flower that blooms only in the instant before waking. As soon as Minna’s eyelids open, “the little pastel dies.” The speaker seems to feel both tenderness and loss, mourning a private, sorrowful inner world that cannot survive ordinary consciousness.