The Same
Distilled down its primary ingredients, this poem is really pretty much nothing but metaphor. All of them serve the them of the connectedness of the universe. The union of separate entities into one which is exemplified throughout nature is also exemplified throughout the poem. And this mass of metaphor begins with the opening lines establishing the pattern of imagery to follow:
“The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the ocean”
The Different
Lines three and four continue to trace the metaphorical conceit, give it a little tweak. Instead of entities commingling to form a larger same (smaller bodies of water emptying into a larger body of water), here the idea of interconnectedness broadens to cross over from sameness to difference. Here is presented the metaphorical union of the purity of the spiritual with the more viscerally base emotion:
“The winds of heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion”
The High and the Low
The second stanza follows upon the closing of the first which ends with the speaker asking of a lover why their two individual spirits should not mingle together to create one. The imagery which follows creates a metaphorical rhetoric of evidence supporting the argument. Even those aspects of nature far apart and facing obstruction eventually find connectedness:
“See the mountains kiss high heaven
And the waves clasp one another”
The Cosmic
From the high and low of earth-based connection the poem continues to move its metaphor toward the expanse. Finally, nearing the end, the connectedness of nature leaps from the planet and into the very cosmos in its effort to convince the lover by the speaker that they two are destined to become as one. Of course, the question lingers: which is the sun and which the earth?
“And the sunlight clasps the earth”
Mr. Shelley Meets Pop Culture
The final metaphorical image conveying the poem’s thematic message of the interconnectedness of the universe before the speaker begs the lover for a kiss has in recent decades become captured the attention and affection of writers of television crime shows. Perhaps it is the ironic juxtaposition of a love poem with murder or perhaps because Percy Shelley’s tragedy-filled life is just one that writers are naturally drawn to. For whatever reason, this final metaphorical image is referenced in an episode of Twin Peaks and actually serves as the title for an episode of Inspector Lewis:
“And the moonbeams kiss the sea”
