In the first stanza of the poem, the speaker, addressing a loved one, recalls a moment when they were "dazzled" by a spectacular bird. They were dazzled so much as to be temporarily "blind." The bird dazzled them with its wings and then flew away. The speaker recalls that their hearts metaphorically "seized upon the sign" of the bird, meaning that they took the bird to be a symbol of the love and the passion that they had in their hearts for one another.

In the second stanza the speaker recalls how he and his loved one followed the bird, riding an "enormous wave" into a cave on the shore. The idea here is perhaps that love is worth pursuing. The speaker then describes how he and his loved one climbed the "iron cliff" in order to see the bird. When they approached the bird, at the top of the cliff, they heard its "silver screaming," and they saw its "fabulous wings" and "crimson beak ... red as blood." At this point the speaker, his loved one, and the bird were all in a "world of stone."

The fact that the bird in the poem (symbolic of love and passion) exists in this "world of stone" suggests that the speaker and his loved one have found a love that is especially precious, because it exists in an otherwise hard and cold world. At the end of the second stanza, the speaker also says that the bird had "no voice to answer but its own." The meaning here is perhaps that the love symbolized by the bird is free of any ties or obligations to the rest of the world.