Spring
Spring - meaning Summary
Spring's Indifferent Abundance
The speaker watches a lively park in spring and notes abundant sensory detail—children, dogs, sunlight, birds—yet feels alienated, calling their own response an "indigestible sterility." The poem treats spring as lavish and unnecessary, flourishing where it is least needed. It suggests a tension: nature’s indiscriminate generosity contrasts with human barrenness, and those least dependent on spring seem to profit most from its gifts.
Read Complete AnalysesGreen-shadowed people sit, or walk in rings, Their children finger the awakened grass, Calmly a cloud stands, calmly a bird sings, And, flashing like a dangled-looking glass, Sun lights the balls that bounce, the dogs that bark, The branch-arrested mist of leaf, and me, Threading my pursed-up way across the park, An indigestible sterility. Spring, of all seasons most gratuitous, Is fold of untaught flower, is race of water Is earth’s most multiple, excited daughter; And those she has least use for see her best, Their paths grown craven and circuitous, Their visions mountain-clear, their needs immodest.
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