T.S. Eliot

Song

Song - meaning Summary

Loss Within Preserved Landscape

The poem contrasts an outwardly unchanged, late-season landscape with a private sign of decline. The speaker returns across a hill to find trees and hedgerows still in bloom, but the addressee’s wreath and its roses are faded and brown. The scene presents nature’s apparent continuity against a personal loss or sorrow, implying that decline affects human bonds even when the wider world seems intact.

Read Complete Analyses

When we came home across the hill no leaves were fallen from the trees; The gentle fingers of the breeze had torn no quivering cobweb down. The hedgerow bloomed with flowers still, no withered petals lay beneath; But the wild roses in your wreath were faded, and the leaves were brown.