Spring

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1921

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form & Meter

Edna St. Vincent Millay crafted “Spring” as a free verse poem with 18 lines and no standard line length across a single stanza (a stanza collects a group of lines). As a free verse poem, “Spring” lacks the set meter (a measure of syllables) and rhyme schemes found in other poetic forms.

Millay most famously wrote sonnets, but “Spring” was one of her first free-verse poems. Free verse poems contrast with the older structured forms of poetry. For example, a poet writing a Shakespearean sonnet would have to ensure the first line rhymes with the third line, as the first stanza needs an ABAB rhyme pattern. While writing a free verse poem, the poet does not have to give up an image, word choice, or idea sequence to make it fit within the rhyme scheme or to match a rigid meter. Instead, the poem's contents arise organically and unhindered from the poet's mind.

Like free verse poems, Millay rejects literary tradition in “Spring.” She breaks the expectation of spring as a time of hope and renewal. The seemingly chaotic free verse poem mirrored the disruption people generally feel during mourning and the specific grief felt after World War I and the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic. The mass death felt senseless and unpredictable, just as the poem unrolls without a guiding structure. The pattern Millay ordinarily used for her poetry disappears in “Spring” just as people had disappeared from the world.

Simile and Metaphor

A simile happens when a poet makes a comparison between two different things using “like” or “as” to indicate how they are similar. Millay uses a simile when her speaker states, “April / Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers” (Lines 17-18). April, then, is coming in very much like someone who is completely unaware of the tragedy everyone else is suffering and making a fool of itself.

Metaphors directly conflate the two things, such as “Life in itself / Is nothing, / An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs” (Lines 13-15). Through the comma, Millay links life to the cup and staircase.

Similes and metaphors enhance images and subtly re-enforce a poem's meaning. Millay uses a metaphor to specify how life feels like nothing. A cup should offer a refreshing drink to hydrate or give pleasure. Carpeted stairs are soft and pretty and make it harder to slip and fall. In Millay's poem, the cup remains empty, and the stairs remain bare. Life, which should nourish, offers no comforts or protection.

The metaphor also works as the cup and stairs situate the reader in the home and everyday life. It subtly frames the speaker's loss as familial or romantic since families and life partners often live together. It also shows that everything reminds her of that loss.

The metaphor and simile also re-contextualize the earlier depictions of flowers as hollow. The metaphor points out that while nature blooms, the speaker will still return to a home without her lost loved one. On the other hand, the simile makes the difference between the speaker's views and the natural world a callous and insensitive oversight on April's part. The month is too stupid and self-centered to consider others' feelings, making the speaker feel more alone as the month flaunts its abundance.

Personification

Millay personifies April in “Spring,” giving it a human personality, motives, and agency. She begins the poem with the month having a familiar enough identity for the speaker to ask why it returned and what else it has to offer besides beauty. This beginning is paralleled by ending the poem with another image of April personified. April continues walking and offering only beauty, seemingly ignoring the speaker's questions.

April's personification emphasizes death's negative impact on the speaker's outlook. Previously, she would have accepted the month's beauty. Now, the speaker interrogates it. It also shows the speaker's anger at death because April will not let the speaker grieve undisturbed. April throws flowers around and babbles, making its joy seem impossible to ignore (Line 18). The personification demonstrates how the speaker's grief makes her feel isolated and resentful toward the world moving on. The dead are abandoned by spring in it’s attempts to pursue joy.

Millay's use of personification makes the poem timeless too. The speaker argues with time itself rather than a single government or military. While Millay wrote the poem about World War I, readers do not need that context to relate to the speaker's feelings. The personification allows the poem to grow into an existential exploration of death. Millay hits upon questions about what it means when the living forget the dead and how a person can grieve when the world keeps turning.

Rhetorical Question

Millay's opening line is a rhetorical question. A person asks a rhetorical question to make a more significant point or inspire a line of thinking rather than receive an answer. While Millay personifies April, the month never answers, “to what purpose […] do you return again?” (Line 1). Instead, Millay uses the question to explain why she no longer finds joy in April's beauty.

The opening line's status as a rhetorical question becomes apparent in the second line when the speaker anticipates April's answer and rejects it as “not enough” (Line 2). The rhetorical question mirrors the speaker's empty life since it has no answer. It also places the poem into a philosophical tone, allowing Millay to ruminate on the experience of loss.