The imagery is very clear and stark; the objects and people she recalls in this stanza are not pleasant or beautiful, much of it is ugly and disgusting, such as a worm that lived in a cat's ear, presumably ringworm, or some other type of disease. Perhaps, she is comparing love to all of these awful, drab things. In the places we could find love, such as in the everyday objects we enjoy, or the people who are supposed to bring us spiritual clarity or advice, such as the preacher, are disgusting, dangerous, and full of death. She certainly does not have a positive view of religion, or the representative of religion, as she describes the preacher with thin lips, who scuffles, and looks for scapegoats. She did not describe him as pious and sweet, as we might think the average preacher is, and for him to be coming by only to locate a scapegoat is not a positive image at all. Thus, though the topic of the second stanza has shifted slightly from the first, the overall tone of the poem is maintained.
The third stanza returns to the direct conversation or argument to love. She begins with a refusal of her own. Just as the dead refuse to listen, she refuses to remember the dead. The narrator believes that the dead are bored with everything. Are the dead bored with love? Are the dead bored with death? How can the dead be bored if they are dead? Is that not a feeling that only the living have? Most poems, particularly those that are written well and are studied long after the poet is dead, offer more questions than answers, and this poem does just that. Perhaps the author forewarned us of this aspect of questioning, as the poem does begin with a question, so it can follow that the poem will leave us with questions, too.
She returns to her argument to love and attempts to tell love what to do. She, sarcastically and perhaps passive...
Love has bad dreams? Love lies with the dead? Perhaps because she does not have love in her life she feels that love is only something that is for the dead, who are also bored with everything. Perhaps it is she who feels dead and feels bored, and that by telling love to go to them, she is telling love to come to her.
The poem is a curse to the poems written specifically for the dead, to lament the loss of them. She curses the dead, she argues with love, and she has a negative perspective upon both. She is a person who lacks love in her life, and recognizes how this lack controls her very being, so in a misguided effort to regain some control, she tries to control love itself, which again, based on the beliefs and ideas of many, is something that just cannot be done. The poem conveys a sense of loneliness and of anger. The poem is quietly distraught. It is not a happy poem; it is a depressing poem narrated by a lonely, loveless person who longs for the thing with which she argues and curses.
