William Morris speaks directly to those who have won happiness only after terrible suffering, urging them to set aside fear of what comes next. If you’ve paid for your bliss with deep sorrow, he says, rest now—love itself is enough. He doesn’t pretend the pain is gone forever; your hands will reach out again and find no help, your cries meet deaf ears. Yet a change always follows, when hearts speak what lips cannot, and the weary world turns glorious. The poem then stills into a fragile truce: a single evening where sorrow hides, battle quiets, and even unloved strangers gather to draw life from your story. The mood is tender and almost wistful, like a lullaby delivered between crises. In the end, Morris wonders aloud whether the threatened earth keeps surviving just so such love can bloom—a quiet, stubborn hope held inside a long exhale.
Song II: Have No Thought for Tomorrow — Summary
Love is enough: have no thought for to-morrow If ye lie down this even in rest from your pain, Ye who have paid for your bliss with great sorrow: For as it was once so it shall be again. Ye shall cry out for death as ye stretch forth in vain
Feeble hands to the hands that would help but they may not, Cry out to deaf ears that would hear if they could; Till again shall the change come, and words your lips say not Your hearts make all plain in the best wise they would And the world ye thought waning is glorious and good:
And no morning now mocks you and no nightfall is weary, The plains are not empty of song and of deed: The sea strayeth not, nor the mountains are dreary; The wind is not helpless for any man's need, Nor falleth the rain but for thistle and weed.
O surely this morning all sorrow is hidden, All battle is hushed for this even at least; And no one this noontide may hunger, unbidden To the flowers and the singing and the joy of your feast Where silent ye sit midst the world's tale increased.
Lo, the lovers unloved that draw nigh for your blessing! For your tale makes the dreaming whereby yet they live The dreams of the day with their hopes of redressing, The dreams of the night with the kisses they give, The dreams of the dawn wherein death and hope strive.
Ah, what shall we say then, but that earth threatened often Shall live on for ever that such things may be, That the dry seed shall quicken, the hard earth shall soften, And the spring-bearing birds flutter north o'er the sea, That earth's garden may bloom round my love's feet and me?