Are you the new person drawn toward me?

The first line of the poem is the same as the title and a question addressed to another second-person character whom the first-person speaker addresses. The speaker questions, “Are you the new person […]” (Line 1). The second-person pronoun indicates the speaker addresses a specific individual, and the descriptor “new” identifies this individual as a stranger. The speaker asks this other individual if they are “drawn toward” them (Line 1). The verb “drawn” has a notion of passivity around it. There is the sense that the individual addressed has no control over their attraction to the speaker. They are pulled toward the speaker involuntarily, like a magnetic field. The interrogative tone of the first line shifts to the imperative in the second line. The speaker notes, “To begin with, take warning” (Line 2). Saying “To begin with” implies that there will be a long list of demands or commands the speaker has to give their addressee; what follows in the second line is only the first of many. The specific command of “take warning” hints at possible danger and uncertainty. The particular reasoning for this warning follows in the second half of this second line. The addressee should take warning because the speaker is “surely far different” than what the addressee “suppose[s]” (Line 2). The speaker sets up a comparison between the ideal and imagined version of the speaker the addressee imagines and the reality. The “warning” the speaker gives could indicate that the addressee may feel some sense of misguidance or disillusion at the version of the speaker they will be presented with. The speaker even hints at this sense of possible disillusionment. After the usage of the imperative, the speaker once more returns to an interrogative sentence structure and ask the specific individual to whom they’re speaking if they “will find in me your ideal” (Line 3). The speaker is aware that the addressee is projecting their idea of perfection onto them. The addressee assumes that the speaker is exactly how they imagine them to be.

The remaining lines of the poem fit this same interrogative tone with the speaker questioning the addressee about their assumptions. After asking the addressee if they think that they (the speaker) will fit their ideals and be everything they hoped they would be, the speaker asks if the addressee believes it will be “easy” to have the speaker “become [their] lover” (Line 4). The fact that the speaker questions these assumptions means they are most likely inaccurate representations. Since the speaker uses the word “lover,” they know, or infer, what the addressee is after—a romantic relationship (Line 4). Also, the usage of the present tense “do” at the beginning of the line (as well as of other lines) as opposed to the past tense “did” means the situation between the addressee and the speaker is ongoing and current. It is in a state of flux and evolution. This fluctuation is clear as the speaker shifts from discussing love to discussing “friendship” (Line 5). The speaker wants to know if the addressee feels “the friendship of me” will be the “unalloy’d satisfaction” they so desire (Line 5). The syntax the speaker uses when they say “[d]o you think the friendship of me” is intriguing (Line 5), as typically the genitive or possessive pronoun would come before the noun, as in “my friendship.” This altered word choice is therefore significant, putting the emphasis on the noun and emotional state of “friendship” itself (Line 5). The adjective “unalloy’d” means “(especially of a positive feeling) not spoiled by any amount of negative feeling; pure” (“unalloyed.” Cambridge Dictionary, 2022). The speaker refers to the ideal state of perfect, untainted contentment the addressee assumes they’ll find in the speaker. Here again is the contrast between the vision of the speaker the addressee has and the reality of who the speaker really is.

In the following line, the character of the speaker grows a little darker and perhaps a bit more sinister. Continuing with their questioning, the speaker asks the addressee if they think the speaker is “trusty” and “faithful” (Line 6). The fact that the speaker is asking the addressee if they “think” these traits can be attributed to them and the contrast that the speaker continuously sets up between the ideal and the real, indicates that the speaker is perhaps the opposite: they aren’t so “trusty” and “faithful” after all. This criticism of the addressee’s gullibility and misplaced trust heightens. The speaker asks the stranger if they can see “no further than this façade,” which comprises the speaker’s “smooth and tolerant manner” (Line 7). The speaker critiques the addressee’s superficial nature and their tendency to only see the physical “facade” on the outside and to read into this “facade” only what they want to. They want to see the speaker as “smooth and tolerant,” even if the speaker is neither of those things, and attempt to fit the speaker into their own small box of what they consider to be ideal. Nearing the end of the poem, the speaker further pushes back against the validity of the addressee’s perceptions of them. The speaker asks the stranger if they think they are “advancing on real ground toward a real heroic man” (Line 8). The use of the word “real” is significant here, as it again implies the opposite. By questioning the stranger and asking if they “suppose” what they believe, see, and think is actually “real,” the speaker indicates the opposite. The addressee isn’t headed down a “real” path on “real ground” (Line 8) but are instead following their own whims. The stranger isn’t seeing the speaker for who they really are but for the “real heroic man” they hope them to be. In this penultimate line, the reader learns the gender of the speaker, as they refer to themself using a masculine noun. In the prior lines, readers are left to infer the speaker’s character and identity by deciphering the opposite of the addressee’s perceptions. However, only towards the end of the poem does the speaker open up to the reader and the addressee to give the tiniest bit of personal information.

While the speaker somewhat identifies himself in the ultimate line, he more directly addresses and “names” the stranger in the final line with the salutation, “O dreamer.” By calling the addressee a “dreamer,” the speaker implies they are basing their beliefs and assumptions on fancy and imagination rather than on reality and fact. This point is furthered when the speaker questions whether the speaker hasn’t considered “that it may be all maya, illusion” (Line 9). The term “maya” relates to a concept in Indian philosophy that “later came to mean the powerful force that creates the cosmic illusion that the phenomenal world is real […] Maya is reflected on the individual level by human ignorance (ajnana) of the real nature of the self, which is mistaken for the empirical ego” (“maya.” Britannica, 2022). The speaker does not ask the stranger if they think that he is “maya, illusion,” but if it is “all” an illusion. The speaker is questioning the addressee’s entire worldview rather than their conduct and beliefs in this one instance. By ending on this point, the speaker forces the reader to question their own reality. How much of their reality is based on the abstractions and assumptions the reader has created in their own mind? The balance between the ideal and the real remains unresolved by the conclusion of the poem.