Give a brief sketch of heaven as described in the blessed damozel

In the poem, the damozel is standing at the edge of Heaven as it dangles over the cosmos, looking down on Earth. She is described as leaning over the bar in the first stanza: "The blessed damozel lean'd out / From the gold bar of Heaven" (1-2). The bar is mentioned again midway through the poem, as the speaker muses that she must have made the gold bar warm from her body heat: "Until her bosom must have made / The bar she lean'd on warm" (45-6). Finally, the gold bar appears again at the end of the poem: "And then she cast her arms along / The golden barriers, / And laid her face between her hands, / And wept" (141-4). The damozel leans against the "gold bar" because she wants more than anything else to be closer to her lover on Earth.

This bar that separates Heaven from everywhere else is a symbolic gate and prison. It keeps the damozel in and keeps her lover out. The damozel can never leave heaven and time passes so slowly for her that she feels trapped. Her lover cannot join her, and he might never be able to. The gold bar serves as the symbolic obstacle between them. The substance that makes up the "gold bar" is also worth noting—gold implies wealth and luxury on one hand, but it is also an unyielding metal on the other. The double-meaning of metal suggests that in "The Blessed Damozel," the inside of Heaven is beautiful for everyone allowed in it, but that there will be no concessions about who gets access.