The main idea of this poem is the loss of a loved person to the writer. This person could be someone closer to him or maybe an past love he has had. He speaks about something that escapes and he can’t keep near him, against his own wishes.

The structure of this poem is simple. It has an only stanza composed of ten verses. I can distinguish between two parts: the first part comprises the first four verses. Here the author introduces us to the poem and he let is us see the firsts questions and doubts which he will talk about throughout all the poem. The second one, until the last verse, he develops the rest of the story, proposing new questions and doubts, which he can’t answer. The last verse can be a general conclusion about the entire poem.

The rhyme is A-B-A-B-C-C-D-D-E-E.

This poem has no title. It has been taken the first verse to title it.

There are several verbal tenses that the poet uses in this poem. He uses past tenses when he speaks about the things that he did or he had and now he has missed it. Then he uses the conditional tense to ask the questions, like waiting for a change, with the hope to retrieve all this moments.

When I read the poem the main feelings, which I have found, were melancholy, sadness, memories, missing… The author speaks about a dove that he had, and it died. He asks why the dove has died. He thinks that the dove could have died because of the grieve, but he also doesn’t know why the dove grieved. The poet grieved because the dove left him but he tries to understand why. He believes everything he did was polite, but even so the dove went away. So he doesn’t understand what happened.

Despite of that, the poem transmits always a positive impression. He personifies the love with a dove. This animal is the symbol of peace, it gives you a positive vision of his story even if this is a sad one. Also when he describes the dove he uses the adjective “sweet” or “pretty”. Here I can see how the author speaks about a loved person, maybe this person never was with him. When he compares it with the dove, he’s using a metaphor: this love flied like a dove. It can be the conclusion of the story. He tells also that he tried to tie the feet of the dove. This is another metaphor, he really tried to keep this person with him, but he failed, this person left him. The thread he used was made of silk, it’s an element in which I can see also his positive intentions, he didn’t want to hurt this person, he had always good purposes, but he couldn’t. The author see this loved person in the dove, white, pure, but free, and like the dove, this person went away, this person flied. When the poet speaks about the death of the dove, he refers to the end of the feeling of love for this person. Really this person didn’t die, just gave up to love him.

The poet is all the time regretting this left, in the 3rd verse he uses “O”, like a moan, maybe to praise. He believes that he makes everything right, I can tell this because the author writes how he took care of the dove: “I kiss’d you oft, and gave you white pease”. And he also utilizes often rhetorical questions, he knows he never gets an answer, but, in this way you can see how the author feels, he’s hopeless, this is his last attempt.

In my opinion, the author really knows why this person left him, but he tries to hide it with the story of the dove. In the poem he believes that the dove, his love, died because of grieve. It can be produced because of him. He’s a little bit selfish, he wants to keep this person with him, but finally he has to accept the freedom of this person, the freedom of flying, as the dove does. With his rhetorical questions he asks why the dove prefers to live in the forest, in the trees than with him. Definitely he has to understand that this person never will be with him, this is the path that the dove has chosen, his platonic love, and he can do anything to change it, only cry.