Perhaps a dream put off too long is like meat that had rotted. Dead animal flesh that some people use for food will turn rancid and give off horrible odors if not used within a certain period of time. If the dream is not realized in a timely fashion, it may seem to decay because it dies. The dream may “crust and sugar over— / Like a syrupy sweet?” If you leave pancake syrup or honey unused for several months, and you go back to fetch the bottle, you might find that there is crusty accumulation on the top of the bottle and the contents are no longer usable. Lack of use had formed that crust, that hard material that is no longer useful because no longer pliable. The dream forced to sit idle hardens into an unusable substance of thoughts that have separated themselves from the goals and formed idle destructive thoughts that are crusted over with despair, doubt, anger, and hatred. The second stanza is not a question but merely a “maybe” suggestion: maybe the dream-goal just sags like trying to carry something heavy. A heavy load makes one walk slowly, makes one clumsy as he tries to move under the load. The dream not realized may become heavy to bear, because it still weighs on one’s mind with musings like “what might have been,” “if only,” “I guess I’ll never know,” “the one that got away.” All these useless thoughts that dip back into the past weigh heavy on the mind that has had to defer a dream. This sagging under a heavy load might lead to depression and mental lethargy. The last stanza returns to the question again, but this time instead of simile, the speaker employs metaphor of an explosion. What explodes? Bombs explode and cause great destruction. If all the other possibilities of a deferred dream are bad with some worse than others, then the last possibility is the worst. If the person whose dream is deferred loses all hope, he might “explode” with his despair.