Weary with toil
-- Speaker (Line 1)

Importance: It is often worthwhile to consider with which ideas or images the poet chooses to begin a particular text. In this case, it is an image of work and weariness. These words, "weary" and "toil," are fairly common words, but they are also strong ones – exaggerated forms of the more ordinary "tired" and "work" that create an image of extremity in both the extent of labor and its effects.

Then begins a journey in my head
-- Speaker (Line 3)

Importance: This line introduces the central metaphor in the poem. The speaker is not going on a literal journey, but rather one of the imagination. The introduction of this idea of distance and travel creates the sense that the poem is bigger than just what happens in one person's mind, but rather includes the external world as well.

To work my mind, when body’s work’s expired
-- Speaker (Line 4)

Importance: This line juxtaposes two...