" Thus, the “oppres-
sive weight / of the squat edifice” refers via metaphor and metonymy to the con-
straints imposed by institutionalized Christianity.
The last stanza contrasts oppressive institutional constraints with the “jasmine
lightness of the moon.” The smell of jasmine comes from something living, a frag-
ile flower, as opposed to something abstract and institutionalized, like religious
dogma. The smell of jasmine is light, rising upward from the ground, not heavy
and earthbound. Metaphorically, it represents freedom; there is nothing holding it
down, just as there is nothing holding down the moon. "

― George Lakoff , More than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor