To a Jilted Lover
To a Jilted Lover - meaning Summary
Guilt Under a Relentless Gaze
A speaker lies sleepless and haunted by guilt after harming a lover. Celestial imagery—the moon as the lover’s eye, stars and sun—externalizes his cold, punitive gaze and the speaker’s mounting remorse. What began as a small wound becomes an unbearable, godlike anger that follows her without refuge. The poem traces personal torment scaled to cosmic forces, ending with the speaker exposed and still "blazing in my golden hell."
Read Complete AnalysesCold on my narrow cot I lie and in sorrow look through my window-square of black: figured in the midnight sky, a mosaic of stars diagrams the falling years, while from the moon, my lover's eye chills me to death with radiance of his frozen faith. Once I wounded him with so small a thorn I never thought his flesh would burn or that the heat within would grow until he stood incandescent as a god; now there is nowhere I can go to hide from him: moon and sun reflect his flame. In the morning all shall be the same again: stars pale before the angry dawn; the gilded cock will turn for me the rack of time until the peak of noon has come and by that glare, my love will see how I am still blazing in my golden hell.
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