I wanted so ably
to reassure you, I wanted
the man you took to be me,
These opening lines reveal a great deal about the speaker right away. In wanting to be able to "reassure" his wife, he is seeking to fulfill the role of the man she "took to be" him. In other words, he wants to live up to the promise of the person she perceived him to be in the first place. This carries a kind of double meaning. It demonstrates the love and affection he feels for her, but it also shows how the speaker and poem view love as a continual performance of acts of care. The speaker is not declaring his love for her through words; he is seeking to do so by providing her with emotional comfort.
The light, love,
the light we felt then,
greyly, was it, that
This passage from the poem uses the image of fading light to capture the tension present in the speaker's relationship with his partner. He describes their "love" as a "light" that they previously felt but has somehow shifted. His use of the adverb "greyly," which is a prelude to a description of physical intimacy, implies that the feeling is still present but is clouded by something now. The specificity of the language draws the emotion of the scene well. Their love is still present, but it is troubled.
grey lost tired bewildered
brother, unused, untaken—
hated by love, and dead,
These lines describe the "grey" figure that comes into the bedroom. The speaker realizes that the figure is his wife's deceased brother. The succession of adjectives applied to him ("tired," "bewildered," "unused," "untaken") imply that his presence is troubling and unwanted. The speaker characterizes him in such a way that makes it clear he has disrupted whatever peace he and his wife have found in this moment of sleep. The figure does not care about the love that the speaker and his wife share and actively wants to come between them. His presence is framed as frightening and invasive.
