Depression Before Spring - Analysis

Introduction and overall impression

The poem reads like a concise, slightly surreal vignette mixing playful sounds with an undertone of disappointment. Its tone moves from bright sonority—crowing and dazzling imagery—to a subdued, unmet expectation captured by the refrain of absence. The mood shifts from jaunty invocation to quiet melancholy as the expected queen never appears.

Context and authorial note

Wallace Stevens, an American modernist poet, often blends everyday observation with imaginative leaps; this short poem fits that tendency by juxtaposing domestic or pastoral details with abstract suggestion. No specific historical event is required to read its emotional effect, though modernist interest in sound, image, and irony informs the piece.

Main themes: expectation, disillusionment, and the play of sound

One theme is expectation: the crowing and the repeated call for a queen imply anticipation of an arrival or fulfillment. Disillusionment follows when the crowing "Brings no rou-cou," and "But no queen comes," making absence central. A related theme is the musicality of language itself—the onomatopoeic sequences (ki-ki-ri-ki, rou-cou-cou) foreground how sound can promise meaning yet ultimately fail to deliver it.

Imagery and recurring symbols

The cock and the absent queen act as symbolic counterpoints: the rooster's crow normally signals day and order, but here it announces vacancy. The "hair of my blonde" described as "dazzling, / As the spittle of cows / threading the wind" mixes glamour with the prosaic or even grotesque, suggesting that beauty and banality coexist and that expectation is tarnished by earthy reality. The green slipper evokes fairy-tale arrival that does not occur, amplifying the sense of thwarted desire.

Ambiguity and interpretive question

The poem's playful sounds and abrupt negative refrains create deliberate ambiguity: is the absent queen a lost lover, an ideal, or simply the failure of language to summon meaning? One might ask whether the poem mourns a personal loss or gently satirizes the very rituals of calling things into being through speech and song.

Conclusion and final insight

Depression Before Spring compresses a small drama of hope and nonarrival into a few vivid images and sounds. Through contrast between lively onomatopoeia and repeated negation, Stevens captures how expectation can be animated by language yet remain unsatisfied, leaving a quiet, resonant ache behind the poem’s bright noises.