“There goes that mad woman, dreaming of the eternal spring of life and the fields, though soon enough, all too soon, she will comb grey hair, and shivering, numb, see the hoarfrost shroud the meadow.” De Castro portrays her thoughts in a deeply visual manner, even though everything has an end to it or an “expiration date” De Castro sees things differently. There is a bright side to everything especially nature, and she only looks forward to the positive perspective of it, which is the long lasting beauty of it. I found it very interesting how she called herself an incurable sleepwalker, how everything she thinks and sees is just part of a dream which she continues to dwell on and can’t seem to live without that perspective, she’s trapped in her dream. “Stars and fountains and flowers, don’t murmur against my dreams; could I delight in you without them, could i live? Its almost as if she knows the truth but doesn’t want her surroundings to advise her of these truths, she’s sort of blinded by reality similar to Orgon in the play “Tartuffe” how he sees tartuffe as the most perfect and holy person even though everyone around him tells him otherwise, no matter what is being told to De Castro or what she sees she still can’t seem to handle or take in the truth.
Although keeping a positive outlook is the right thing to do it also makes sense to face reality. De Castro uses her poetic ways to illustrate how nature (Plants, Fountains, Stars, Birds) all seem to mock her and try to bring out the ugly truth about everything, such as death. Whether its a human or an object everything has its expiration date. De Castros writings are very poetic and portray a lot of imagery, which helps the reader visualize what is going on and get a better understanding.
I also agree that De Castro uses extremely visual language in all of her works. Like most romantic poets she was really trying to capture the beauty of nature in her work. “The wave with its swish, nor stars with their sparkle” this is just one example of extremely visual language used by De Castro in her work. De Castro in this poem is trying to see the positives of nature but she also notices the negatives and how they mock her. “Poor soul, incurable sleepwalker, dream on and on.” Overall De Castro wants to see the positives of nature but cant help herself from seeing the negatives. However, she realizes that she cannot live without nature. “Stars and fountains and flowers, don’t murmur against my dreams; could I delight in you without them, without them, could I live?” This quote shows how important nature is to De Castro, and this was true for most romantic poets. I agree with you in that De Castro sees the negatives and positives in nature, but she would be unable to live without it.
I’m not sure if I’d say De Castro’s point is that she believes she cannot live without nature. While I do agree that she certainly notices negatives and positives in nature, more specifically, I believe the things she references in the first stanza for a different reason. The plants, fountains, birds, waves, and stars remind De Castro of her own mortality and her inability to control her expiration date. The plants will die. The fountains will run dry. The birds will stop singing. The waves will return to sea. The stars will collapse.
When she refers to herself as an “incurable sleepwalker” that will “dream on and on of expiring life’s eternal spring,” I think she’s communicating that she is able to find pleasure in musing about her time of death. She knows that to ignore its inevitability would be foolish.
In the last line when she says “could I delight in you without them, without them, could I live?” she is restating that the things she finds most beautiful are the things that remind her of death – but here she finds an optimistic way to look at the juxtaposition of her existence within nature. De Castro is aware that she will die and because of this, she is able to appreciate her time she spends on Earth. If she could not manage to appreciate this, there would be no point in living.
***edit to my second sentence: “While I do agree that she certainly notices negatives and positives in nature, I believe she references nature in the first stanza for a more specific reason.”***