Analysis of "Mistletoe" by Walter de la Mare

 Poem Found Here:  "Mistletoe" by Walter de la Mare

I tend to have hit or miss readings for poems.  I'm warning whoever is reading this that this will will be a "miss" reading of a poem.  Why?  The poem hits for me different if a think of the variables relating to LGBT context.

I usually stick to new criticism since I gain more as a poet from looking at poems in a technique sense.  Yes, this poem does echo a sonnet style with two septets that parallel each other, but with slight differences (the "shadow" having more of an ominous ungendered presence in the second septet).  

I can also point out how the slight changes bring the gothic into the poem -- being touched by the unknown like the Christmas spirit or a past memory of lament.

But for this case, this reminds me of one night stands and hooking up.  Maybe that's what the poem means, but it all depends how you view the shadow.

Sitting under the mistletoe

(Pale-green, fairy mistletoe),

One last candle burning low,

All the sleepy dancers gone

For me, the image of the last candle feels like the end of a party or the end of the night.  I think of party since "sleepy dancers" become part of the scene.  These could be real or imagined, but this poem goes into the imagined with "Just one candle burning on, / Shadows lurking everywhere: some one came , and kissed me there."  

The question is who.  Is it someone part of the shadows?  Is this person real or imagined?  And in this instance I remembered my own "shadows" both real and imagined.  Christmas brings out the festive spirit, but also loneliness for those who cannot share in the festive spirit.  And with the lack of gender associated with the shadow, the first things that come to my mind are hookups and one night stands.  The lonely hunt the lonely.  The lonely kiss and stay or leave.  With the last line, it appears that the shadow has left, but the memory of the kiss remains.

Tired I was; my head would go

Nodding under the mistletoe

(Pale-green, fairy mistletoe),

No footsteps came, no voice, but only,

Just as I sat there, sleepy, lonely, Stooped in

the still and shadowy air Lips unseen-and

kissed me there.

I quoted the whole second stanza because the biggest difference between the first and second stanza is that the speaker affirms that "no one" is with him in his loneliness -- no footsteps, no voice, just the speaker being lonely and sleepy, but still receiving a kiss from "Lips unseen."  

Who is the being under the "shadowy air?"  I think this hits me as a gay man looking at the past history of gay men there are so many stories of the "shadow" having to be a secret, having to be no one, but the emotion."  Another way of looking at it as a "love that has no name."  This poem could have had a pronoun of "her" and cast away this type of interpretation, but no.  The shadow takes front and center leaving a memory of love than actual love.