The poem explores themes of time and loss, along with anxiety about the darkening political situation in Europe following the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War.

[2] According to Jon Stallworthy, Louis MacNeice wrote The Sunlight on the Garden as a "love-song" for his first wife, Mary Ezra, shortly after their divorce was finalised in November 1936.

At the same time that MacNeice wrote The Sunlight on the Garden he was collaborating with W. H. Auden on Letters from Iceland, and in Last Will and Testament from Letters from Iceland MacNeice shows a similar spirit of generosity towards Mary: Lastly to Mary living in a remote Country I leave whatever she would remember Of hers and mine before she took that boat,

The sunlight on the garden Hardens and grows cold, We cannot cage the minute Within its nets of gold, When all is told We cannot beg for pardon.

George MacBeth comments that the rhyme scheme "has the effect of dovetailing the lines together and producing a constant sense of echo emphasising the lingering, fading quality of the joys of life which the poem is talking about.