The poem starts with a small piece of history: in 1795 a surveyor gave this mountain the name Violet Hill. The speaker doesn't just accept the name, though. They wonder how he came to it. Did he look at the mountain from far away, where distance turns hills blue? Or did he look down and notice the violets right at his feet, shivering in the rain? The question is left open, and the two images pull against each other: a faraway view and a close-up one.
Then the poem shifts to the present. A warbler, newly back from the tropics, sings in a quiet, hesitant way, as if it were trying to remember all its notes. The comparison is gentle and a little funny. The bird, like the speaker and the surveyor, is working out how to say something about this place.
The mood is calm, curious and tender. The speaker seems less interested in answers than in paying attention, and in the way names and songs both have to be found again each spring.