The speaker here isn't reflecting on a past relationship but on the early stage of a current one. "It's too late now" not to get the other person back but to give them up without serious injury. Yet the speaker sees that the relationship can't last ("there really isn't hope for the two of us"), making the situation tragic.
The first verse describes a desire to possess and control the beloved, not treating them as an autonomous being but more like an exotic pet. This desire stems from a fear of intimacy: she wants to hold him on a leash not just so that he can't "stray" but so that he can't "follow [her] around all day." This is the phase of the relationship where she's enchanted by the beloved's novelty and doesn't yet know him on a deep level.
In the second verse, she continues to objectify the beloved, but her attitude has shifted from cavalier (putting on and putting away the diamond at her pleasure) to grasping ("desperately cradling our young love"). She laments that he will inevitably "leave [her] clutch" though he will leave behind "colorful dust." She will be marked by the beloved but cannot possess him permanently, presumably because after coming to know each other better one or both of them will realize that they're incompatible.
The speaker here isn't reflecting on a past relationship but on the early stage of a current one. "It's too late now" not to get the other person back but to give them up without serious injury. Yet the speaker sees that the relationship can't last ("there really isn't hope for the two of us"), making the situation tragic.
The first verse describes a desire to possess and control the beloved, not treating them as an autonomous being but more like an exotic pet. This desire stems from a fear of intimacy: she wants to hold him on a leash not just so that he can't "stray" but so that he can't "follow [her] around all day." This is the phase of the relationship where she's enchanted by the beloved's novelty and doesn't yet know him on a deep level.
In the second verse, she continues to objectify the beloved, but her attitude has shifted from cavalier (putting on and putting away the diamond at her pleasure) to grasping ("desperately cradling our young love"). She laments that he will inevitably "leave [her] clutch" though he will leave behind "colorful dust." She will be marked by the beloved but cannot possess him permanently, presumably because after coming to know each other better one or both of them will realize that they're incompatible.