Summary
The poem describes the author’s childhood and the character of her love. The last wasn’t complicated but more gentle as if she “weave a web”. This feeling is compared with her adult world in which the author becomes “subtle” and “fretting at the thought”. This means the author looks for some sense of things, including love. The adult world becomes “stony staff” which also means that the concept of love is more complicated. For the author, childhood had less clarity but was full of new senses and unexpectedness.
Language
The author uses simple language but comparing her adult world and childhood implements bright imagery. For instance, epithets like “cloudless and gentle” describe the feeling of childhood love while adulthood is more like “shapeless stony”. This way the author appeals to our senses.
Theme
Generally, this poem is a lyrical comparison of two worlds of a child and an adult. Both are still in one person who remembers and misses someone she was. She’s tired of being too “subtle” and thinking of serious things instead of sensing the world around her.
Tone
The whole poem is full of the author’s yearning and reminiscence of her childhood.
Imagery
The metaphor “web to weave” stands out among other figures of speech and refers to the easiness and levity of being a child. Another adulthood metaphor “shapeless stony stuff” contrasts the gentleness of immaturity. The diversity of life is realized via “glittering landscape” metaphor.
As the title indicates, in this poem, Jennings remembers her childhood. She contrasts her childhood state of mind with her adult state. As a child she lived without analyzing her world too deeply and that was a happier state for her. Then she did not "fret at thought" (in other words, worry) or try to figure everything out: she simply lived and did not try to "whittle a pattern" (make sense of everything). Adult thinking causes her anxiety, making her sometimes "numb with fear." She looks back nostalgically and with longing to the time when she "would find the day/Long as I wished its length or web to weave."
The theme of this poem is the longing for and idealizing of the simpler days of childhood. While normally we think it is good to become more clear, analytical, and sophisticated in our thinking, she prefers a time when her mind was not so "clear," when she simply sensed and existed more than thought. Thinking is a burden to her: she is "confused" now that she has "grown too subtle."
The tone of the poem is gentle and lyrical, while the imagery contrasts the soft images of her child's mind with the hard images of her adult mind. Her child self was "happy" and could be loved in a way that was "cloudless and gentle." The day was like "web," a soft, delicate object.
Her adult mind is described with harder images: it is trying to "whittle ... stony stuff." Her mind's "landscape" is now "glittering." The word glittering conjures hard objects like stones or gems that can cut and hurt.
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