Almost the entire poem is set inside a dream. The geography of the dream space is not entirely clear, and seems to be fantastical and changing in nature. It shifts with the ideas the speaker is trying to express, and is created by the force of his imagination alone. At the end of the poem, the speaker is abruptly torn from this dream space and returned to his reality, where he is without a lover to embrace and has been erotically stimulated by the dream.