Summary

The speaker introduces a dream he had, in which he became a vine. This vine wrapped around "Lucia," a woman he is in love with (4). The tendrils of his vine wrap up her limbs and then her torso. He crowns her head with grapes, like the Greco-Roman god Bacchus. The vines eventually wrap so tightly around Lucia that it is impossible for her to move. He reaches out with the leaves on his vine to try to touch her private parts (the "parts that maids keep unespied") but then suddenly becomes so overwhelmed that he awakens (19). On awakening, he discovers, to his disappointment, that he is like a "stock," and not a vine at all (23).

Analysis

This poem is perhaps best known for its heightened and explicit eroticism. For modern readers, it may be difficult to imagine that the literature of the English Renaissance...