The stars, sun, moon, all shrink away,
A desert vast without a bound,
And nothing left to eat or drink,
And a dark desert all around.
The honey of her infant lips,
The bread and wine of her sweet smile,
The wild game of her roving eye,
Does him to infancy beguile;
For as he eats and drinks he grows
Younger and younger every day;
And on the desert wild they both
Wander in terror and dismay.
Like the wild stag she flees away,
Her fear plants many a thicket wild;
While he pursues her night and day,
By various arts of love beguil'd;
The fleeing stag or doe is a traditional image of the skittish lover, whom the famished hunter pursues. Compare Sir Thomas Wyatt’s “Whoso List to Hunt” (16th century): 
 Yet may I by no means my wearied mind Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore Fainting I follow… 
 And graven with diamonds in letters plain There is written, her fair neck round about: 
 Noli me tangere , for Caesar’s I am, And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.
The Mental Traveller