A grown man remembers the girl he loved as a boy. They walked to school together and spent holidays among June buttercups, ferns, and woods. In one remembered game he buried her under leaves and called her back like Lazarus; she rose laughing, her curls shaking like bells. Then the adult world began to notice them. What had been innocent produced shame, but that shame deepened into stronger love. She grew quieter and more guarded, though her sympathy already seemed womanly. The idyll ends abruptly: one angry moment separated them, and the years that followed brought only longing, never reunion. The mood is wistful and elegiac. Childhood is remembered as golden and full of laughter, but the final feeling is quiet grief for an intimacy that adult pride and anger destroyed.
Lines from "The Soul's Destroyer" — Summary
We went together side by side to school, Together had our holidays in fields Made golden by June's buttercups ; in woods, Where under ferns fresh pulled I buried her, And called her forth like Lazarus from the grave; She'd laughing come, to shake her curls until Methought to hear full half a hundred bells. A grown-up world took playful notice soon. Made me feel shame that grew a greater love; She was more chary of her laughter then, And more subdued her voice, as soft and sweet As Autumn's, blowing through his golden reeds. In her sweet sympathies she was a woman When scarcely she was more than child in years ; And yet one angry moment parted us. And days of longing never joined us more.