Disclaimer: This essay / commentary is bred from entirely my own thoughts, opinion, and interpretation. It is not to be regarded as authoritative.

     

A Complaint - William Wordsworth 

There is a change—and I am poor;

Your love hath been, nor long ago,

A fountain at my fond heart's door,

Whose only business was to flow;

And flow it did; not taking heed

Of its own bounty, or my need.

What happy moments did I count!

Blest was I then all bliss above!

Now, for that consecrated fount

Of murmuring, sparkling, living love,

What have I? shall I dare to tell?

A comfortless and hidden well.

A well of love—it may be deep—

I trust it is,—and never dry:

What matter? if the waters sleep

In silence and obscurity.

—Such change, and at the very door

Of my fond heart, hath made me poor.

(source: www.poetryfoundation.org)

        In this poem, there is a general sense that the persona is feeling unhappy and discontent with his relationship with his beloved. It could be read that he is lamenting his beloved's lack of interest, concern, and affection for him.

      But I find it goes deeper than that. As I was reading it, I find that it is also lamenting the transmogrification that a romantic relationship inevitably undergoes. I use the word 'transmogrification' because I believe that was what the persona would have seen the process as - a radiant, glowing, sparkling feeling that has since died down and dulled into something plain and mundane. Note the first noun that appears in the poem - it is the word "change". And change is rightfully used to signify not so much the loss of love, but rather the change in its form and  appearance.

        The persona brings up two rather different - yet paradoxically similar - images to describe love. In the first half of the poem, he nostalgically remembers the beauty of a new relationship, the excitement, the thrill, the soaring heights towards which it lifts people up. The image of a fountain is used, one that spurts out a "murmuring, sparkling, living love". The alliterative words sprinkled in the first stanza - "fountain", "fond", "flow" - with its soft "f" sounds reinforces the sensation of flight and elation.

        But there is soon a change in tone in the second stanza, as the ecstasy of new love ebbs away and transmutes into something more inconspicuous and reticent. The first two statements show the rapture of the persona as he exultantly exclaims the happy moments he and his beloved shared. Then, with a voltaic "Now", the persona makes it known that there is a slow but sure shift in their love. He begins to have doubts, insecurities, fears, as he puts forward questions to which he realises that their love has simmered into something quite unremarkable and unextraordinary.

        That is when the second image of love is brought forth. The persona is despaired at the thought that he is left with only a "comfortless and hidden well". He reluctantly admits in a dash-laden third stanza that it is no doubt a "well of love", functional, useful, necessary to sustain life. It never is "dry", and it runs "deep". But it is less glamorous than the previous form of love.

        The persona seems to debate with himself for a while which of the two types of love he would rather have. But alas, he prefers the aesthetically beautiful but impractical fountain as opposed to the beneficial but uninteresting well. The heavy "d" words lend a rather sober, dampened sense, as opposed to the previous use of the "f" sounds, which gives the sense that the persona would rather revert back to the soaring, high-flying feelings of love rather than the deep-rooted, quiet love that he has now. Almost nonchalantly, he dismisses the well's steadfastness and loyalty, opining that deep, hidden love that sleeps in "silence and obscurity" is no love at all, putting all further indecisiveness to rest with a strong full stop at the end of line 16.

        The persona brings us back full circle, as he again bewails the change in love, and how this has cost him dearly and left him poor.