Waking in the night, the speaker mistakes a lover's hair for fallen autumn leaves, and that half-dream slips into a memory of walking through a forest together, admiring how gracefully trees decay. From there the poem turns to a quarrel. The couple struggled to forgive each other for reasons they couldn't fully explain, yet needed to believe in, like the words of a song in a language they don't speak.
The speaker's mood is tender but anxious, as the title suggests. They admit bluntly that death comes whether people love or not, and that without forgiveness everything falls apart. Humility, they say, has to tame pride and resentment before love can go on. The crude language gives that idea some real anger and urgency. Still, the ending softens. Voices are weak against the night, but the physical weight of the partner makes the darkness feel less deep. The final questions, asking whether the other will wait and whether they can forgive themselves, leave the poem open, hopeful but unsure.