April
April - meaning Summary
Spring's Overwhelming Presence
The speaker imagines a companion joining him in a different place but instead describes an overpowering spring landscape that leaves him restless. Vivid natural details — the low sun, swollen buds, lilac leaves, limp poplar tassels — create a sense of sensory excess that presses on the narrator. The image of pounding hoofs on raw sods haunts him into the night. He awakens "smiling but tired," exhausted by spring’s intensity.
Read Complete AnalysesIf you had come away with me into another state we had been quiet together. But there the sun coming up out of the nothing beyond the lake was too low in the sky, there was too great a pushing against him, too much of sumac buds, pink in the head with the clear gum upon them, too many opening hearts of lilac leaves, too many, too many swollen limp poplar tassels on the bare branches! It was too strong in the air. I had no rest against that springtime! The pounding of the hoofs on the raw sods stayed with me half through the night. I awoke smiling but tired.
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