Thomas Moore argues that the love we feel in the carefree, sunny days of youth is actually quite shallow. In the first flush of life, everything seems bright because we’re full of our own inner light, but Moore insists that real devotion hasn’t arrived yet. It only comes later, after the first sharp taste of loss and disappointment, when the glittering cup of pleasure gets replaced by something darker. The speaker feels that affection which grows out of hardship has a depth and honesty that happiness can never produce. He compares it to flowers in constantly sunny climates—they look splendid but lack the intense fragrance that emerges only after rain and mist. The mood is wistful and gently wise, not despairing. There’s a calm acceptance that tears and sorrow aren’t just painful interruptions; they’re precisely what draw out love’s truest, richest essence.
In the Morning of Life — Summary
In the morning of life, when its cares are unknown, And its pleasures in all their new lustre begin, When we live in a bright-beaming world of our own, And the light that surrounds us is all from within; Oh 'tis not, believe me, in that happy time We can love, as in hours of less transport we may; -- Of our smiles, of our hopes, 'tis the gay sunny prime, But affection is truest when these fade away.
When we see the first glory of youth pass us by, Like a leaf on the stream that will never return, When our cup, which had sparkled with pleasure so high, First tastes of the other, the dark-flowing urn; Then, then in the time when affection holds sway With a depth and a tenderness joy never knew; Love, nursed among pleasures, is faithless as they, But the love born of Sorrow, like Sorrow, is true.
In climes full of sunshine, though splendid the flowers, Their sighs have no freshness, their odour no worth; 'Tis the cloud and the mist of our own Isle of showers That call the rich spirit of fragrancy forth. So it is not 'mid splendour, prosperity, mirth, That the depth of Love's generous spirit appears; To the sunshine of smiles it may first owe its birth, But the soul of its sweetness is drawn out by tears.