Textuality » 4A Interacting
Reading the title, I expect the poem to be about a special picture, a picture that is associated to a witchcraft. This picture is magic like a witch. But what is able to do this picture in order to be considered magic? The intelligent reader reads the text to find out the answer.
The poem is organized in two stanzas: they refers to a different time. The first speaks about a present situation, while the second is related to a future situation, as a matter of fact the second stanza starts with "But now", that underlines the passing of time. There is a transformation.
The poem speaks about two lovers, a man and a woman. The man wants to leave, but the woman cries because se doesn't want him to leave. The man feels guilty because looking himself in the woman's eye, he sees that is image is damaged. He also thinks that she is killing him by this negative image he sees in her eye.
In the first line we understand what is happening: the man is looking at the woman's eye and there he sees his image. This is the way in which the poem stars and also the reflection. In the following lines, there are lots of words that refers to sight sense: eye, picture, look: the man is considering the image that the woman created about himself, different from what the man really is. Italians say "gli occhi sono lo specchio dell'anima" that means that fixing deeply a person's eye, you can read his soul: this is what is happening in this poem.
The poets uses two time, two words with the same meaning : there, in thine eye. Considering that the most frequent word in the first stanza is "I", there is a comparison between the speaking voice and the other person: you vs I. The man is trying to makes the woman understand that he has no guilt if she build an erroneous image of the man. This erroneous image of the man will leave with him, for this reason it can't be true: I'll depart - my picture vanish'd. Pity my picture burning in thine eye: here the intelligent reader finds out the alliteration of the sound "P" that conveys the idea of pain.
The second stanza represent a change: it starts with the words "but now" and verbs are at the present perfect: I've drunke thy sweet salt tears. Here there is an oxymoron: sweet - salt. How can taste a tear? It depends on the feeling, on the emotions of who tastes it. Is the man happy or sad? Both. He is happy (sweet tear) because he has understood that her really loves him; he is sad (salt tear) because she his making him suffer (pictures made and marred to kill)
In the lines 10 and 11 there's the explanation of the reasons why he leaves her: he doesn't want to look anymore his negative image and leaving the picture will vanish.