The Witch — Summary

The eight lines turn the common advice to “toil and grow rich” into something grim and predatory. Getting rich is compared not to honest reward but to sleeping with a foul witch: it seems alluring or necessary, yet it drains you completely and leaves you empty. The speaker’s tone is bitter and weary, as if speaking from experience. After the draining comes a movement toward a chamber where “one long sought” lies with despair. That figure stays deliberately shadowy, but it suggests that what a person chases through wealth and effort is finally found only in a dark, deathly room, accompanied by despair. The mood is claustrophobic and disillusioned, turning ambition into a kind of slow poisoning. Instead of fulfillment, the poem leaves a sense of being used, hollowed out, and led toward an ending that is not triumph but a quiet, despairing discovery.