Minx
Why did you in a dream return last night When you had safely gone so long ago? I was surprised to see you standing there To find that you could still disturb me so!
Elizabeth von Schonberg
SourceLicence:Public domain (US, unrenewed)
Why did you in a dream return last night When you had safely gone so long ago? I was surprised to see you standing there To find that you could still disturb me so!
Someone from the speaker's past has turned up in a dream, and the speaker is rattled by it. The opening question is half complaint, half bewilderment: why now, when this person had "safely gone so long ago"? That word "safely" says a lot. It suggests the speaker once needed to be protected from this figure, and felt relieved when the distance finally came.
What the speaker discovers is that the relief was less solid than it seemed. A single dream is enough to undo it. The closing line, with its exclamation mark, reads as genuine surprise, almost embarrassment: the speaker believed the old hold had loosened, and it hasn't.
The mood is quiet but unsettled. Nothing dramatic happens; the whole event is a figure "standing there." Yet the poem captures how memory can ambush us when we least expect it. The title, "Minx," hints that the person was playful and troublesome, which may explain why the effect lingers.