Walter de la Mare’s speaker asks where his beloved has gone and answers in a half-dreamlike way: she lies beneath a grey April sky, in silence and shadow. A bird in the darkness repeats, “Love lies here.” The speaker immediately softens the blow: she is not dead, he insists; her soul has simply left the body, its “last pure earthly mansion,” and now calls out like a bird in the leaves. The effect is delicate and eerie. Grief is present but hasn’t hardened into acceptance. The phrase “Love lies here” hovers between “this is where she is buried” and “love remains here,” and the poem seems to prefer the second meaning. The mood is hushed, tender, and strangely consoling, as if the lost person has become something alive in the spring air.
Where? — Summary
Where is my love-- In silence and shadow she lies,
Under the April-grey, calm waste of the skies; And a bird above, In the darkness tender and clear, Keeps saying over and over, Love lies here!
Not that she's dead; Only her soul is flown
Out of its last pure earthly mansion; And cries instead In the darkness, tender and clear, Like the voice of a bird in the leaves, Love--love lies here.