A boy carves his initials high in a tree and announces big ambitions: he'll be a knight, a poet, a lover, a sage. Then the tree is cut down, and the poem moves quickly through the rest of his life. He works, dreams, has a family, and loses a child. He settles into a profession and a comfortable routine, even burning wood on cosy nights, perhaps the very kind of wood that once held his hopes.
The tone shifts from youthful confidence to quiet loss, then to something stranger. In the fire, flame-coloured flowers and letters drift around the room, "chastising burning," as if the past is both scolding and consoling him. At the end he sees his own words and a "hidden grail" rise from the flames. The poem seems to suggest that his early dreams were not wholly destroyed. They return, changed by grief and ordinary life, as a kind of private, hard-won meaning. The mood is wistful, but it ends with a glimmer of hope.