Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.
Lines 119-125
Well, go! I bless ye. Fewer tapers there,
But in a row: and, going, turn your backs
—Ay, like departing altar-ministrants,
And leave me in my church, the church for peace,
That I may watch at leisure if he leers—
Old Gandolf—at me, from his onion-stone,
As still he envied me, so fair she was!
- The bishop, busting out yet another simile, tells his sons to walk out of the church and turn their backs on him like servants in a mass ("minstrants" (121)).
- He's going to stay behind and see if Gandolf—in his cheap, run-down tomb—isn't checking him (the bishop) out with an envious look.
- After all, the bishop concludes, "she" (his former wife) was smoking hot.