The title names it a recollection, and that is the distinction worth holding on to: this is not the going for refuge but the calling of it to mind afterwards. The tradition treats such recollection as a practice in its own right rather than as a commemoration.

The second verse says who is speaking. อุปาสะกัตตัง is the state of being a lay follower, and it was declared ภิกขุสังฆัสสะ สัมมุขา, in the presence of the Sangha of bhikkhus. This is a lay person's chant and it states as much in its own words rather than leaving it to be inferred.

Its middle verses closely echo one of the best known canonical verses on refuge, reworded in the first person — เม, my, where the familiar form is impersonal. That is why no source is attributed above: what is printed here is a near relative of that verse rather than the verse itself.

The claim in the middle is a large one, stated without qualification: this is my safe refuge, this is the supreme refuge, and coming to it one is freed from all suffering. เขมัง means safe in the sense of secure, out of danger. Nothing is hedged.

The last two verses then measure what the speaker can actually promise, and the contrast is deliberate. ยะถาพะลัง — as far as my strength allows — is the same qualification the book uses elsewhere when a chant is put into lay mouths. What is claimed for the refuge is unlimited; what is claimed for the person is not.

That pairing is the reason the verses are recited rather than simply known. Between them the two halves say that the refuge is complete and the practitioner is not, and the chant closes looking forward — อะนาคะเต, in time to come — rather than on anything already achieved.