Forgetting, the poem insists at the start, is not supposed to be easy. Four times in the first eight lines a question begins with "Is it": "Is it that easy to forget your face," "Is it fair to thieve glorious sunrays," "Is it that easy to forget our time." The speaker seems to be arguing with someone, perhaps the person addressed, perhaps memory itself, perhaps their own wish to move on. The poem never says which. The grievance is clear, though. The face was something "learnt," studied like a landscape with "vivid pathways," and losing it feels less like fading than like theft.
The imagery of the opening is built on light. Glorious sunrays are stolen and leave only "a hopeful trace," a faint mark where something bright used to be. The word "hopeful" matters here, because the trace is not wholly sad. It is the part of the past that still promises something, and that is exactly why it is hard to give up. The speaker is also honest about what the relationship actually did. It made woe "somewhat tolerable," not gone, and the modest "somewhat" makes the claim more believable. The rhyme of "tolerable" with "insufferable" pulls the two opposites together in one long, trailing sound, as if the good and the unbearable could not be separated.
At "Ay" the poem turns. In shape it is a sonnet, with an octave of questions followed by a sestet of answers, though the rhymes are the poet's own arrangement. The octave rhymes ABBA CDDC, and each quatrain closes back on its first sound like a thought circling itself. The sestet alternates EFEFEF and moves steadily forward. The questions stop and the sentences turn into statements and requests. The rhythm helps. Most lines settle near ten syllables with a loose iambic pulse, and "Is it that easy to forget your face" is almost perfectly regular. Later lines stretch and stumble slightly, which suits a speaker still working things out.
The sestet's rhymes are worth hearing. "Likeness," "agedness" and "gloriousness" all end on the same soft, unstressed "-ness," so the decision arrives with a sigh and not a slam. Then the second rhyme set steps through "be," "flee" and "free," a small progression from existing, to escaping, to release. "Flee" is a startling verb in a poem that claims to be calm. People flee from danger, and the word suggests that the speaker is afraid of how strong the memory still is.
The most revealing line is "Allow me to see this as agedness." It is a request, not a discovery. The speaker does not find that the memory has grown old but asks permission to look at it that way, so that distance becomes possible. Even the concession before it, "as gorgeous as all its stories may be," cannot avoid praise. "Gloriousness" in the final couplet echoes the "glorious sunrays" of line three, so the speaker never manages to dismiss the past without admiring it. The poem therefore argues against itself, and that is what makes it convincing.
The title and last line frame this tension. "Proper" is a cool, formal word, the language of manners and correct behaviour, and it sits oddly beside the feeling underneath. There is also a quiet echo with "mine" in line eight, since "proper" can also mean "one's own." That may be coincidence, but it fits a poem about what a person is allowed to keep. The closing phrase, "I let you free," presents the leaving as generosity. Judging by the rest of the poem, though, the person most in need of freedom may be the speaker. Calling the farewell a kindness makes it easier to carry out.
What gives the poem its interest is that it stages a decision being made. Letting go is often imagined as a feeling that simply arrives, but here it is a case built line by line, with objections raised and answered and a comforting label ("agedness") put on a memory that is still bright. The ending is correct and also reluctant: "It is hard to end this gloriousness / But it is proper." The speaker does the right thing without pretending it costs nothing, and that honesty is what stays with the reader.