Reminiscence

In this poem, the speaker remembers a happy time in the past,  in which she was not suffering the anxieties brought about by turbulent romantic relationships.

The Four Leaf Clover by Winslow Homer

Wikimedia Commons

When I was happy alone, too young for love

Or to be loved in any but a way

Cloudless and gentle, I would find the day

Long as I wished its length or web to weave.

In the first stanza, the persona enlarges on the way in which she could enjoy her day when she was “alone”, (without a partner) and “happy”. The combination of the adjectives “happy” and “alone” may have two different implications about her present: either that she is not happy alone anymore (and she worries because she has ended a relationship or because she wants to start one) or that she is not alone anymore but  what makes her unhappy is the complexity of her present relationship.

The reason why she was “happy alone” in the past was that she was too young to know a love which was not ”cloudless and gentle”.  The word “cloudless” may mean that the love she had known up to that moment was clear, i.e. nothing obscured it, and nothing made her doubt about it, or that it didn´t present any danger or menace (“clouds”) for her, i.e. it was constant. The adjective “gentle” seems to suggest that it was a moderate and delicate love, far away from stormy outburst of passion. We wonder if this love could be the love of family and friends.

In any case, in those days, as she didn´t have to spend her day worrying about love, she used to be able to use her time in any way she wanted. She could “weave” her minutes and hours into different patterns: into a line (suggested by the words “long”, “length”) or into a circle (suggested by the word “web”). Therefore, she could fill her day with a succession of actions  or with activities that revolved around the same topic, but she was free to choose as she wished. The alliteration of “w” in the last line emphasises her wish to go back to that past time, which sets the nostalgic tone of the poem.

I did not know or could not know enough

To fret at thought or even try to whittle

A pattern from the shapeless stony stuff

That now confuses since I’ve grown too subtle.

In the second stanza, the persona contrasts the past and the present. She describes the worries she lacked in the past but which haunt her now. As, in the good old days, she lacked experience in love matters, she didn´t need to brood over the problems brought about by relationships. To convey the anxiety, the stress and the difficulty that these worries imply for her she uses the metaphor of a stone carver.  Like this kind of artisan, the speaker has to “whittle a pattern” out of “shapeless stony stuff”, which, in her case, would be the attitudes, events and words of her lover. To do so, she would spend a lot of time analysing the clues provided by her lover  to understand them clearly. The words “whittle” and “stony” emphasise the effort this task involves for her, and contrast with the word “weave” of the previous stanza, which describe a light kind of work.

As she has become excessively “subtle”, she overanalyses details and clues provided by her partner in order to see how the relationship is going. This is the way in which she occupies her time now. The “stuff” she works with “confuses” her. Her understanding of relationships is not clear any longer.  It is hard for her to make sense of them.She does not know “cloudless” love anymore.

I used the senses, did not seek to find

Something they could not touch, made numb with fear;

I felt the glittering landscape in the mind

And O was happy not to have it clear.

In the third stanza, the persona goes back to the past to refer to the way in which she relied on her senses instead of seeking what is not concrete. The first lines of this stanza allow different interpretations. On the one hand, they may imply that in her present relationships the speaker does not feel satisfied with sensual love, but  she is looking for ideals that are not tangible (Faithfulness? Eternal love? Absolute devotion?) and she is made “numb with fear” at the possibility of not finding them. On the other hand, they may suggest that she doesn't trust the information provided by the senses anymore, but she tries to go beyond them for hidden meanings, which make her anxious.

In the past, she used to think of love as a ‘glittering landscape’. The metaphor suggests a place that is looked from a distance and looks attractive. Even though glitter may add beauty to something, it can also prevent the onlooker to see it clearly.  However, this last fact is not seen as a disadvantage. On the contrary, the fact that the speaker didn´t have a clear idea of the nature of relationships made her happy. Today she would love to go back to that happiness. This wish is felt deeply, as the interjection “O” suggests.

For the persona, love is no longer a glittering landscape. She has experienced it, and she knows its drawbacks and conflicts: not only does it confuse her but it also takes away a lot of time of her life and makes her anxious. That is why she would like to go back to the happy past when she felt happy because she didn´t need to worry about it.