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Poetry · Chapter

XXII: Of That So Sweet Imprisonment explained

The speaker expresses a longing for a sweet imprisonment in the beloved's arms, where love makes the bonds tremulous and the night allures without alarms, culminating in a union where soul lies prisoned with soul.

What happens

The speaker expresses a longing for a sweet imprisonment in the beloved's arms, where love makes the bonds tremulous and the night allures without alarms, culminating in a union where soul lies prisoned with soul.

Themes in this chapter

  • Love and Longing

    The poem centers on the desire for a sweet imprisonment in the beloved's embrace, highlighting the longing for union.

  • Mortality and Sleep

    The imagery of sleep giving way to dreamier sleep suggests a merging of souls that borders on the eternal or deathlike.

Characters to notice

  • Narrator

    The speaker who yearns for imprisonment in the beloved's arms.

  • Beloved

    The one whose soft arms woo the narrator to relent and detain.

  • Love

    The force that makes the interwoven arms tremulous.

Key passages

  • “Of that so sweet imprisonment My soul, dearest, is fain”

    My soul desires that delightful captivity, my dearest.

    The speaker expresses a willing surrender to the beloved's embrace.

  • “But sleep to dreamier sleep be wed Where soul with soul lies prisoned.”

    May sleep be joined to an even deeper sleep, where soul is imprisoned with soul.

    The union of souls is described as a profound, dreamlike state.

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