Prologue to Spring
Prologue to Spring - meaning Summary
Winter Frozen, Spring Anticipated
The poem depicts a winter landscape immobilized by an almost magical, crystalline cold. Nature is described as glassy, sculpted, and suspended, with leaves, lakes, and people frozen in tableau. The speaker asks what counterforce might break this paralysis and allow change. The closing image of green-singing birds among rocks hints that life and spring persist quietly beneath or around the ice, suggesting eventual renewal.
Read Complete AnalysesThe winter landscape hangs in balance now, Transfixed by glare of blue from gorgon's eye; The skaters freese within a stone tableau. Air alters into glass and the whole sky Grows brittle as a tilted china bowl; Hill and valley stiffen row on row. Each fallen leaf is trapped by spell of steel, Crimped like fern in the quartz atmosphere; Repose of scultpure holds the country still. What coutermagic can undo the snare Which has stopped the season in its tracks And suspended all that might occur? Locked in crystal caskets are the lakes, Yet as we wonder what cam come of ice Green-singing birds explore from all the rocks.
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