Crazy Jane and Jack the Journeyman
Crazy Jane and Jack the Journeyman - meaning Summary
Love as Unraveling Skein
The speaker reflects on love as a fragile, unraveling skein: the more one leaves things open, the quicker love slips away. Death and ghostly imagery suggest a tension between bodily endings and an enduring bond that might persist beyond life. Although the narrator fears losing love in life, they imagine that the connection could continue "ghost to ghost," so that the beloved still walks with them after death.
Read Complete AnalysesI know, although when looks meet I tremble to the bone, The more I leave the door unlatched The sooner love is gone, For love is but a skein unwound Between the dark and dawn. A lonely ghost the ghost is That to God shall come; I - love's skein upon the ground, My body in the tomb - Shall leap into the light lost In my mother's womb. But were I left to lie alone In an empty bed, The skein so bound us ghost to ghost When he turned his head passing on the road that night, Mine must walk when dead.
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