The Sunshade

Song Meaning

The speaker discovers the skeletal remains of a lady's sunshade, a fragile relic of past fashion and leisure, now reduced to "a naked sheaf of wires." This immediate image sets a tone of decay and the passage of time, contrasting the object's former elegance with its current, stark state. The lyrics pivot to the profound stillness of the sunshade's demise, "in its coffin of stone, unseen till to-day." The object is no longer a functional screen, its colors faded, its purpose lost to the relentless "noonshine." This emphasizes the irreversible nature of time and the inevitable breakdown of even the most delicate things. The central mystery becomes the woman who once wielded this sunshade, her "little thumb standing against its stem." The speaker speculates on her "love-stratagem" and her "softening yet more the already soft face," painting a picture of a woman absorbed in her own life and perhaps vanity. The question arises: has she, too, become a "skeleton"? The poem concludes with a poignant, almost philosophical query about regret. The speaker wonders if the woman, now potentially deceased, "regret dust can" the "vain things thought" while she used the sunshade. This final thought connects the object's decay to the potential ephemerality of human concerns and the ultimate leveling effect of mortality.