Daytime, in this poem, is only the gap between two meetings. The speaker's "little star" never appears in the waking world. She belongs entirely to sleep, and everything else, the trip home and the "whole day" of missing her, is waiting for bed to come round again. The poem sounds like a gentle lullaby, but it is about a longing so complete that it starts to organise a whole life.
The first stanza sets up the central tension with a startling phrase: "tiny nightmares light my way." Nightmares do not usually guide anyone, yet here they work like stars, small points of light in a dark space. The metaphor explains the title. Judging by the imagery, even the frightening side of sleep is welcome, because it comes with her. The speaker then admits, "Why she's here it's hard to say," which is how dreams behave, appearing without explanation. The stanza ends with a request that is really a plea: "please leave tomorrow, not today." The tone is polite and almost shy, like someone asking a guest to stay a little longer. The speaker knows she will go and is bargaining for one more night.
The second stanza turns on a puzzling image: "She sees me, not as I am, / but shades of dark-pale gray." It can be read in two ways. She may see the speaker softened, in blurred middle tones rather than harsh black and white. Or she may simply not see the real person at all. The hyphenated "dark-pale" refuses to settle on either shade, like the half-light between sleeping and waking. Then the poem snaps awake: "Now I'm awake and she's disappeared." The lines also grow longer here. The dream lines are short, six syllables each in "She sees me, not as I am" and "but shades of dark-pale gray", while the waking lines stretch to nine. The form seems to mimic the way the day drags once the star is gone.
The rhyme does a lot of quiet work. In the first two stanzas one sound keeps returning: "way," "say," "today," "gray," "day." It works like a chant, and the words "today" and "day" mark the speaker's whole daytime existence. The very first line ends on "me," which has no rhyming partner, so the speaker begins slightly unanswered. The third stanza then switches to tidy couplets: "bed" with "red," "sweet" with "meet." After the open, echoing "-ay" sound, the poem seems to close like a door, and the rhymes pair up just as the speaker finally pairs up with the star.
The last stanza holds the poem's most ambiguous images. "Within my walls of red" could mean a bedroom, or the red glow behind closed eyelids. Either way the word "walls" suggests enclosure, as if the speaker's world is shrinking to the size of a bed. "And then I drift off to my sweet" also delays its noun. "Sweet" hangs at the end of the line, so it can mean "sweet dreams" or the beloved herself, an endearment like "my sweet." The word "dreams" only arrives in the next line, in the final admission: "it's only in my dreams we ever meet."
The poem never says who the star is. She might be an imagined lover, someone lost, or a figure who exists only in sleep. That openness is its strength, and it makes the poem faintly unsettling. The bouncing rhymes and the pet name "little star" sound tender, but the speaker has handed the day over to waiting, and "back to bed" is described almost as a homecoming. The poem never judges this. It leaves readers to decide whether the dream is a comfort or a hiding place.
For school readers, the poem shows how much a simple form can carry. Short lines, a repeating rhyme and one daring metaphor, nightmares as lamps, are enough to build a mood of tenderness mixed with unease. It also shows how a change in rhyme or line length can mirror a change in feeling, which is a good thing to look for in any poem.