The speaker begins in a low place. Someone has lied to them, and the lies feel like a pool they are slowly drowning in. Instead of fighting back, they turn to the water itself and imagine it as a woman, "the lady of the waters," and tell her the whole story of their lost love. She listens, and she dries their tears. That small act of kindness changes everything.
From there, the poem moves from pain toward devotion. The speaker comes to love her "softness and gentle womanhood" and makes a promise to honor and respect her above all others. The closing lines, calling her sister, aunt and mother, suggest she becomes a kind of family, offering the care that the lover failed to give.
The mood shifts from grief and helplessness to gratitude and tenderness. The water starts as something that threatens and ends as something that heals, which gives the poem a quiet, hopeful feeling.