The speaker bursts with delight at the sheer, energetic beauty of spring—weeds shooting long and lush, thrush eggs like tiny heavens, a bird’s song so sharp it feels like lightning, the blue sky rushing through pear blossoms, lambs racing. Everything feels ripe, alive, almost overwhelming. Then the mood turns. That flood of “juice” and “joy” is suddenly understood as a lingering trace of Eden, a memory of an innocent, unspoiled world. The exhilaration grows urgent, even anxious: this sweetness won’t last. It will spoil, cloud over, sour with sin. So the poem ends as a direct, whispered plea to Christ: seize and preserve that innocent heart and Mayday freshness in children before it’s lost. It’s a snapshot of pure wonder, then a sudden, aching awareness that such beauty is both sacred and heartbreakingly temporary.
Spring — Summary
Nothing is so beautiful as spring— When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush; Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing; The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling. What is all this juice and all this joy? A strain of the earth's sweet being in the beginning In Eden garden.—Have, get, before it cloy, Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning, Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy, Most, O maid's child, thy choice and worthy the winning.