“Tears, Idle Tears” consists of four stanzas of five lines each in blank verse. One might imagine that the end sound of each line trails away, reflecting how the speaker pines for greater meaning as she remembers the lost past. Yet, the stanzas are unified through the dreamy repetition of the phrase “the days that are no more,” which concludes every stanza.
The poem does not need a fixed meaning; after all, the speaker introduces the song without a clear understanding of what her tears mean. She comes up with adjectives to explain how the lost days are sad, fresh, and strange, and she calls them Death in Life. But why the tears? Are they happy tears of memory, sad tears of loss, tears of confusion or frustration, or each of these in turn or together?