William Carlos Williams

Spring and All by William Carlos Williams

By the road to the contagious hospital
under the surge of the blue
mottled clouds driven from the
northeast-a cold wind. Beyond, the
waste of broad, muddy fields
brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen
patches of standing water
the scattering of tall trees
All along the road the reddish
purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
stuff of bushes and small trees
with dead, brown leaves under them
leafless vines-
Lifeless in appearance, sluggish
dazed spring approaches-
They enter the new world naked,
cold, uncertain of all
save that they enter. All about them
the cold, familiar wind-
Now the grass, tomorrow
the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf
One by one objects are defined-
It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf
But now the stark dignity of
entrance-Still, the profound change
has come upon them: rooted, they
grip down and begin to awaken

The narrator described the scene in the end of winter on his way to the hospital. In the first three stanzas, the narrator gave the reader a dreary mood like "contagious hospital," " brown with dried weeds." In the third stanza, the narrator began to use more birght colors like purplis and reddish, but still gave us a disconsolate feeling. From the fourth stanza, the narrator shifted to embrace the coming spring. He portrayed how new life will emerge from this landscape as it begins to wake up. He used the word "quickens" in the last two stanza instead of "sluggish" which he used it previously.