Song Meaning
The lyrics open on a scene of profound stillness, as nature settles into the quiet of night. Crimson and white petals sleep, the cypress stands motionless, and a gold fin is still. This pervasive calm creates a hushed, intimate atmosphere, almost a prelude.
The initial quietude subtly shifts as a firefly wakens, prompting a direct, tender invitation: "waken thou with me." The narrator observes the world's gentle surrender – a "milk-white peacock like a ghost" and the "Earth all Danaë to the stars" – subtly urging a similar openness from a beloved. This creates a delicate anticipation, a quiet yearning for shared experience amidst the calm.
The true artistry lies in the consistent, tender parallelism between the natural world and the narrator's intimate desire. Each observation of nature's quiet actions, like the "silent meteor" leaving a "shining furrow," is immediately linked to the beloved's internal state or desired action, "as thy thoughts, in me." This technique culminates powerfully in the final lines, where the lily folding "all her sweetness up" and slipping into the lake is explicitly mirrored by the plea: "So fold thyself... and slip into my bosom and be lost in me." It's a masterful use of imagery to suggest a profound, gentle merging.
The cumulative effect is a profound sense of gentle seduction and complete, trusting surrender. The repeated "Now" anchors the experience in an immediate, present moment, while the soft, almost whispered verbs like "sleeps," "droops," and "slips" create a hypnotic rhythm, drawing the listener deeper into the scene. By framing intimacy as a natural, quiet unfolding, much like the night itself, the lyrics make the invitation feel not just romantic, but deeply comforting and almost predestined, culminating in a desire for total absorption.
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