In spring, the speaker asks daisies whether a lover’s words were true, and she trusts their answer: the daisies are “clever, clear-eyed” and seem to know. By autumn, everything has changed. The fields are “brown and barren,” a bitter wind is blowing, and the asters—flowers that resemble daisies but bloom late—have nothing to tell her. Where spring felt full of certainty, autumn offers only silence.
The shift from hope to disillusionment is sharp. The speaker’s change from seeing flowers as wise to calling the asters “stupid” reveals her hurt. She wants reassurance that the promises once given were real, but the season of answers is over. The mood is wistful and quietly bitter: a love, or a belief in love, has faded with the year.