All Forgot for Recollecting

All Forgot for Recollecting - meaning Summary

Love Outweighs Worldly Gains

The poem describes a speaker who willingly abandons social position, wealth, and familiar ties for the sake of a newly arrived, unnamed beloved. Material advantages and domestic comforts shrink in importance compared with the speaker’s intense inward commitment. Nature and circumstance—sun or storm—become irrelevant as the speaker casts their future like a small stone into the beloved’s vast sea. The closing lines ask the beloved to show whether the speaker’s sacrifice was mistaken and to reveal the beloved’s feeling in return. The tone is resolute, intimate, and uncertain all at once.