"I sought a theme and sought for it in vain"
This quote describes the speaker's long, beleaguered journey to try to find poetic inspiration and/or meaning in his life. He is seeking a theme, a central core that will generate meaning, but the search proves fruitless. This powerful first line brings us into the speaker's mindset of disillusionment, confusion and lostness.
"What can I but enumerate old themes,
First that sea-rider Oisin led by the nose
Through three enchanted islands, allegorical dreams"
This line finds the speaker returning to old ideas and sparks that once guided him and inspired him to write and live with frivolity and joy. Since he is no longer able to come up with new, fresh themes, he instead walks the well-worn paths of the legends, myths and lore that used to inspire him.
"Those masterful images because complete
Grew in pure mind but out of what began?
A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street,
Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can"
This paragraph finds the speaker thinking back, wondering what set him off on this whole long journey of seeking great themes and living vicariously through hollow, unreal mythologies and fantasies. He thinks that in truth, all of these masterful, wonderful images really just began from the only thing that, ultimately, is left to us, once all the fires of youth and glory have faded away—the lonely desolation of the heart. But it is this desolation that makes us create better, larger, superhuman worlds out of what small materials we have within us; it is this ruin that lets us hope and dream. In the rag and bone shop of the heart, everyone spins fantasies and dreams. But when it comes down to it, all ends where all begins, and we must return to the humble reality of the simple truth of who we really are.
"Maybe at last being but a broken man
I must be satisfied with my heart"
This line finds the speaker realizing that he has experienced a great deal in his life, and he has been broken down by events that occurred. Having none of the embellishments he used to rely on—his heroic stories, his vast dreams and fantasies—he has come to realize that all he has left is his heart, his ability to love and care humbly. He is realizing that what is on the inside is truly what remains, for better or for worse, while all other things decay.
