An older speaker sits on a park bench and watches a man feeding ducks, a man who turns out to be himself thirty years earlier. The poem is a dream, and in it the speaker gets to watch his younger self meet "Blossom," the woman he loved. Small, gentle details make the scene feel warm: the offered bread, the compliment on her dress, the blush, the shared laughter. The speaker slips from observer to participant, so that "the man and I" speak as one.
The mood begins as nostalgic and joyful, full of spring and smiling. Then the single word "but" breaks it. The speaker wakes in a hospital bed with a tear on his cheek, and the dream's happiness turns to loss. Judging by the ending, Blossom is gone, and the speaker is old or unwell. The final couplet, "love may never die, / but blossom will fall," says that love can last in memory even though the person, like a flower, cannot.