The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter, by Ezra Pound, is a story about a growing relationship between the female narrator and her eventual husband, the river-merchant. The first stanza starts off while the two were still young. At this time, the narrator "played about the front gate, pulling flowers." The future husband "came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse". These activities show the youthfulness of the pair at this point. They don't seem to be romantically involved at this point, as they are "Two small people, without dislike or suspicion".
The second stanza begins with the narrator being 14, and marrying the river-merchant. At this point, the wife "never laughed, being bashful." We still see the youth in her, still making the transition to being a wife. The next stanza, when she turns 15, she starts to mature, when she "stopped scowling". She starts at this point to love her husband, saying she "desired my dust to be mingled with yours / Forever and forever and forever." This is certainly a shift from before.
During the fourth stanza, the wife turns 16, and the river-merchant leaves. The line "The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead" shows the manifestation of the wife's sorrow. The last stanza shows even more of this manifestation, with a different moss growing where the old moss was that the river-merchant walked. The wife is getting older, and yearns for her husband. She asks that if he is "coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang", if he would let her know, so she can come to meet him.
The most significant part of this poem for me is the transition of the romance. The relationship goes from indifference, to just a marriage without significant love, to love, then despair and longing. Something beautiful to it.
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