The poem is from the point of view of an adult looking back at a youthful memory. They see summer days as idyllic and halcyon until their experience with the bees. The poem opens with “Often in summer” (Line 1), suggesting a stretch of years and other summers preceding the poem’s events. The speaker remembers a wooden bridge, willow trees, a rented boat—all images of a peaceful childhood in the countryside.

Specific details may be the product of invention rather than true memory: the “gauze wings a-glitter” (Line 4), the bees “swift as tigers” (Line 4), the “crickets chitter” (Line 11) as the friends waited for nightfall. The reader wonders how much of the stage is set by the vivid memory of the day, and how much has blurred and recrystallized over time. Toward the poem’s end we see the blurring of memory: “A hive burned on a cool night in summer” (Line 27); we know that the poem’s event takes place in January. This echoes the summer days referenced in the beginning; the speaker perhaps superimposes softer days over the harsh winter of their memory.

As the poem closes, the poet speaks of loss, “a precious stone to me, a nectar / Distilled in time” (Lines 28-29).