Despite its title, this is a love poem with very little comfort in it. The repeated word "surcease," meaning an end to pain or a pause from suffering, sounds like a plea the speaker can't stop making. Between those pleas come bare, disconnected images: a crack of sun at a cloud's edge, a church tower to the east, a woman's brown hair tied with a black ribbon, a gutted building, men tossing boards from a truck. Nothing is explained, and the scenes feel cold, damaged, or unfinished.
The ending pulls the feeling into focus. The speaker lies "insane with love" for someone, and a spider descends on a thread "to bind me into death." Love here is obsessive and overwhelming, close to a sickness. The spider suggests being caught and wrapped up slowly, and its return ("again") hints that this has happened before. The mood is anxious, haunted, and fixated, as if the speaker can't escape either the longing or the dread.