Love here is a trap with two settings. Without the beloved, the speaker says, he faces endless longing, a loneliness so heavy it shatters the sun and stars, and a silence that erases his sense of self. But with the beloved, he is no freer: he must live with insecurity, constant fear, and the need to humble himself just to reach toward her. The poem’s mood is wry and quietly desperate—romantic, but exhausted by romance.
In the final stanza he turns to the beloved’s “serene and potent eyes” and asks for a compromise. He wants to enjoy her light without being pulled into the dangerous depths behind it. The closing image of “sturdier fish” facing that “fatal sea” is almost playful, but it also admits weakness: he is asking to love from a safe distance, or not to be consumed.