In “Spring Touch,” spring arrives as a rush of tender, drunken energy. The speaker looks out at meadows that seem “tender-mad,” at wobbling lambs and tipsy trees leaning like foam on green seas. Everything feels soft, dizzy, and achingly alive. The season comes through the body: pale moths flutter, apple-blossoms feel like surf, and the speaker speaks to a presence—maybe spring itself, maybe a lover—swimming waist-deep in that foam. There is affection and desire in that gaze, but also a light, unsteady wonder. The final lines turn openly intimate; the speaker takes in the “new tingle” of seeds, wanting to share in the season’s swelling, quivering growth. The mood is lush, playful, and quietly sensual, full of the strange lightness and hunger that early spring can bring.
Spring Touch — Summary
How tender-mad the little meadows lie! The wobbling lambs are tasting milky weeds, The tipsy trees Are leaned like foam on green, wind-gullied seas;
The pale moth flutters where the pale moth leads, And you, swimming the sky Waist deep in surf of apple-blossoms — I, Sweet to your thigh, Take the new tingle of your froth of seeds.