Seven short lines, and the speaker is already halfway out the door. This morning there will be a journey to Constantinople, where the woman the speaker loves sells child's coats. Then, almost as an afterthought, we learn what happened last night: a chest was sent for, and black silk was put on "for joy." That is the whole story. The central idea sits in the gap between the grand destination and the humble details. Love turns a trip to a faraway, fabled city into an occasion, and it makes an ordinary shop the place worth dressing up for.
The poem plays its two registers against each other. "Constantinople" is the only long word in the text, five syllables that take a moment to say, and it sounds like a place from a storybook. It is the old name of the city now called Istanbul, which gives the poem a slightly out-of-time feel, as if it were a traveller's song from another century. Against that grandeur, the woman's trade is tiny: "sells child's coats." The words shrink to three syllables. Coats for children are practical, small and warm, and the detail suggests a tenderness the speaker never states. We are not told why she is there or whether she knows the speaker is coming. The poem leaves those gaps open.
The shape of the lines does quiet work. There is no rhyme, and the language is plain, close to speech. But the line lengths are not random. Counting syllables, the first three lines run six, six, six, a steady walking pace. Then the poem contracts sharply to three syllables ("sells child's coats") and two ("Last night"). After that it widens again to five ("I sent for my chest") and finally eight ("and put on my black silk for joy"). The last line is the longest, so the poem ends by swelling. The title promises a song, and the music is in the small echoes: the long o of "go," "Constantinople" and "coats," and the soft hiss of "sells," "coats," "chest" and "silk."
The handling of time is the cleverest part. The poem begins in the future ("I will go") and then jumps backward ("Last night"). That isolated two-word line works like a held breath before the turn. Telling the destination first mimics how excitement behaves, with the news bursting out before the explanation. The reversal then shows that the speaker has been living inside the journey since the night before. Sending for a chest, which I read as a trunk fetched for packing, sounds ceremonious and a little old-fashioned. It fits the poem's faraway air and shows that this trip is being treated with care.
Then comes the final image, the black silk. Black is so often the colour of mourning or seriousness that it is startling to meet it beside the word "joy." The poem insists, though, that this is festive clothing, the best the speaker owns. Dressing up becomes the speaker's way of courting without a single declaration of feeling. "Love" appears once, stated flatly, and "joy" is held back until the very last word. By then we do not need to be told, because the silk has already said it.
What makes the poem worth reading is that restraint. It has no adjectives of longing and no metaphors straining for effect. It trusts objects (a chest, a silk garment, a rack of small coats) to carry emotion, and the reader feels the happiness by assembling them. It also suggests that love is practical and visible, shown in what we pack, what we wear and how far we will go before breakfast. In seven lines it holds a whole small drama of anticipation, and it ends with the speaker dressed and ready, with the journey still ahead.