The leaves that hung but never grew

Bob Chilcott's note on his version reads thusly (I found this thread looking for web commentary on the meaning of the poem; how nice I found it in home-town LJ.) (I was about to post, I don't know much about medieval poetry but this seems a bit of a stretch, given the first lines; but commenters here have already said similar things.)

The meaning of this enchanting medieval poem remains elusive. The oldest known source is a sixteenth-century British Library manuscript (Harley 7578), and the text was first printed in a modern edition in 1907. It also appears in The New Oxford Book of English Verse, edited by Helen Gardner, with the title ‘The Bridal Morn’.

‘The Lily and the Rose’ can be read as a symbol of the Virgin Mary, and perhaps the most convincing interpretation of the poem is that of Mary mourning the death of her son. References to ‘bearing the bell away’ and to the ‘bailey’ could be seen to support this: in the Middle Ages, bells were rung over a body to confirm death, and the bailey is a synonym for ‘keep’, the place where a body might be buried. The bell can also mean the ‘beautiful one’, who is taken away by the bailiff—in other words, God. ‘The silver is white, red is the gold’ could be interpreted as the purity of the Virgin Mary being inferior to the red of the blood that was shed by her dying son.

Another modern interpretation is that the text is concerned with the fear and excitement of a young girl on her wedding day, hence the title in The New Oxford Book of English Verse. Certainly, references to mother, windows, and sunshine can be read as images of protection and freedom.