[غـــرور]

My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a water'd shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow l
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these
Because my love is come to me.

Raise me a dais of silk and down;
Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
Carve it in doves and pomegranates,
And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
Work it in gold and silver grapes,
In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;
Because the birthday of my life
Is come, my love is come to me.


Poem Summary
Lines 1-2
The speaker opens with a simile, or a figure of speech expressing the similarity between two seemingly unlike things. Here, she compares her heart with a “singing bird,” which suggests pure happiness and energy, and herself to a “watered shoot” in which the bird has nested. A shoot is a young branch or leaf that develops from a bud. By using this simile the speaker implies she feels as if she were newly born, as the title figuratively suggests. But while a shoot is brought to life by water, the speaker has come alive with love.
Lines 3-6
In these lines the speaker continues to search for the perfect simile to express her love. First she compares her heart to “an apple tree” whose branches are so heavy with sensuous, life-giving fruit that they are “bent.” Next she compares it to “a rainbow l,” bright with color and paddling in the “halcyon,” or peaceful, sea. Each of the similes in the first six lines tries to describe the speaker’s emotion in a different way. This frenzied approach reveals the speaker’s urgent need to express her joy. Yet the comparisons also share one quality: each is from nature, implying that love is above all a natural, and therefore innocent, wonder.
Lines 7-8
In the last two lines of the first octave, the speaker decides that none of the similes in fact suffices. Though all are glad images, her “heart is gladder than all of these” because “love has come” to her.
Lines 9-10
In the second octave, the speaker abandons her attempt to compare her love with the miracles of nature. Instead, she commands the listener build her a “dais,” or a platform built in a hall to honor someone. She wants the dais to be lush, layered in “silk and down” and covered with “vair,” or squirrel fur, and “purple dies.” This ornate spectacle, we might guess, is to celebrate her “birthday.” Because her love has elevated her to such lofty heights, the splendid dais seems like one fit for royalty. Also notice the shift in voice from the declarative of the first stanza to the imperative, or command form, of the second stanza. The speaker is no longer tentative, no longer gropes for the proper images. She now knows what she wants and commands that it be done.
Lines 11-14
In these lines the speaker describes exactly how she would like her dais to be built. It should be sculpted with “doves” and “peacocks with a hundred eyes,” with “pomegranates,” “gold and silver grapes” and “silver fleur-de-lys,” or iris, the symbol of French royalty. In contrast with the first stanza, these images are not directly from nature but are “carved” representations of natural objects. Unlike phenomena of nature — like birds, apples, and ls — these carved renditions do not perish. Rather, they stand eternal, calling to mind the natural objects the way Keats’ Grecian urn forever immortalizes youth long passed. Thus, the dais is a more fitting symbol of the speaker’s love because it will not perish.
Lines 15-16
In the final lines, the speaker confirms the meaning of the poem’s title, which is a phor — or an implied, rather than directly stated, comparison between two things — for the way she feels. Though it might not be her chronological birthday, it seems to her that love has brought new life, or made her “reborn.”