A speaker, aching from lost love, wishes tenderness could outlast passion’s fever. If truth and gentle feeling survived once wild emotions fall into deep sleep, the speaker “should not weep.” But they do weep, because those things don’t last. The second stanza shows what would be enough: just the beloved’s soft gaze, the dream of it, to burn with hidden fire — if only the person could remain as they once were. That conditional “couldst thou but be” hangs painfully.
The poem then contrasts nature’s reliable rebirth. After winter, violets reappear; fields revive. Yet two things that move and form all others — life and love — never truly return once they are gone. The mood is muted heartbreak, a sorrowful knowing that in the human heart, there is no guaranteed spring.