William Carlos Williams

The Shadow

The Shadow - context Summary

Published in Spring and All

This short lyric appears in Williams’s 1923 collection Spring and All. It presents spring as a tactile, enclosing presence, using vivid sensory images—stone, new earth, blossomy hair—to merge landscape and the speaker’s body. Placed in that collection, the poem reflects Williams’s move toward concise, imagistic lines and contributes to his exploration of renewal, embodiment, and the everyday through pared-down language and direct perception.

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SOFT as the bed in the earth Where a stone has lain— So soft, so smooth and so cool, Spring closes me in With her arms and her hands. Rich as the smell Of new earth on a stone, That has lain, breathing The damp through its pores— Spring closes me in With her blossomy hair; Brings dark to my eyes.

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