The Gardener 19: You Walked by the Riverside Path
The Gardener 19: You Walked by the Riverside Path - meaning Summary
A Glimpse Across the River
The poem describes a brief, charged encounter between the speaker and a veiled woman carrying a pitcher by a riverside. Her quick, shy glance through the veil registers as a luminous, fleeting moment—likened to a breeze on water or a bird crossing a dark room—that stirs longing in the observer. The poem focuses on separation and yearning: a transient, unspoken connection that both reveals and conceals desire.
Read Complete AnalysesYou walked by the riverside path with the full pitcher upon your hip. Why did you swiftly turn your face and peep at me through your fluttering veil? That gleaming look from the dark came upon me like a breeze that sends a shiver through the rippling water and sweeps away to the shadowy shore. It came to me like the bird of the evening that hurriedly flies across the lampless room from the one open window to the other, and disappears in the night. You are hidden as a star behind the hills, and I am a passer-by upon the road. But why did you stop for a moment and glance at my face through your veil while you walked by the riverside path with the full pitcher upon your hip?
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