Craving for Spring
I wish it were spring in the world.
Let it be spring!
Come, bubbling, surging tide of sap!
Come, rush of creation!
Come, life! surge through this mass of mortification!
Come, sweep away these exquisite, ghastly first-flowers,
which are rather last-flowers!
Come, thaw down their cool portentousness, dissolve them:
snowdrops, straight, death-veined exhalations of white and purple crocuses,
flowers of the penumbra, issue of corruption, nourished in mortification,
jets of exquisite finality;
Come, spring, make havoc of them!
I trample on the snowdrops, it gives me pleasure to tread down the jonquils,
to destroy the chill Lent lilies;
for I am sick of them, their faint-bloodedness,
slow-blooded, icy-fleshed, portentous.
I want the fine, kindling wine-sap of spring,
gold, and of inconceivably fine, quintessential brightness,
rare almost as beams, yet overwhelmingly potent,
strong like the greatest force of world-balancing.
This is the same that picks up the harvest of wheat
and rocks it, tons of grain, on the ripening wind;
the same that dangles the globe-shaped pleiads of fruit
temptingly in mid-air, between a playful thumb and finger;
oh, and suddenly, from out of nowhere, whirls the pear-bloom,
upon us, and apple- and almond- and apricot- and quince-blossom,
storms and cumulus clouds of all imaginable blossom
about our bewildered faces,
though we do not worship.
I wish it were spring
cunningly blowing on the fallen sparks, odds and ends of the old, scattered fire,
and kindling shapely little conflagrations
curious long-legged foals, and wide-eared calves, and naked sparrow-bubs.
I wish that spring
would start the thundering traffic of feet
new feet on the earth, beating with impatience.
I wish it were spring, thundering
delicate, tender spring.
I wish these brittle, frost-lovely flowers of passionate, mysterious corruption
were not yet to come still more from the still-flickering discontent.
Oh, in the spring, the bluebell bows him down for very exuberance,
exulting with secret warm excess,
bowed down with his inner magnificence!
Oh, yes, the gush of spring is strong enough
to toss the globe of earth like a ball on a water-jet
dancing sportfully;
as you see a tiny celluloid ball tossing on a squirt of water
for men to shoot at, penny-a-time, in a booth at a fair.
The gush of spring is strong enough
to play with the globe of earth like a ball on a fountain;
At the same time it opens the tiny hands of the hazel
with such infinite patience.
The power of the rising, golden, all-creative sap could take the earth
and heave it off among the stars, into the invisible;
the same sets the throstle at sunset on a bough
singing against the blackbird;
comes out in the hesitating tremor of the primrose,
and betrays its candour in the round white strawberry flower,
is dignified in the foxglove, like a Red-Indian brave.
Ah come, come quickly, spring!
come and lift us towards our culmination, we myriads;
we who have never flowered, like patient cactuses.
Come and lift us to our end, to blossom, bring us to our summer
we who are winter-weary in the winter of the of the world.
Come making the chaffinch nests hollow and cosy,
come and soften the willow buds till they are puffed and furred,
then blow them over with gold.
Coma and cajole the gawky colt’s-foot flowers.
Come quickly, and vindicate us.
against too much death.
Come quickly, and stir the rotten globe of the world from within,
burst it with germination, with world anew.
Come now, to us, your adherents, who cannot flower from the ice.
All the world gleams with the lilies of death the Unconquerable,
but come, give us our turn.
Enough of the virgins and lilies, of passionate, suffocating perfume of corruption,
no more narcissus perfume, lily harlots, the blades of sensation
piercing the flesh to blossom of death.
Have done, have done with this shuddering, delicious business
of thrilling ruin in the flesh, of pungent passion, of rare, death-edged ecstasy.
Give us our turn, give us a chance, let our hour strike,
O soon, soon!
Let the darkness turn violet with rich dawn.
Let the darkness be warmed, warmed through to a ruddy violet,
incipient purpling towards summer in the world of the heart of man.
Are the violets already here!
Show me! I tremble so much to hear it, that even now
on the threshold of spring, I fear I shall die.
Show me the violets that are out.
Oh, if it be true, and the living darkness of the blood of man is purpling with violets,
if the violets are coming out from under the rack of men, winter-rotten and fallen,
we shall have spring.
Pray not to die on this Pisgah blossoming with violets.
Pray to live through.
If you catch a whiff of violets from the darkness of the shadow of man
it will be spring in the world,
it will be spring in the world of the living;
wonderment organising itself, heralding itself with the violets,
stirring of new seasons.
Ah, do not let me die on the brink of such anticipation!
Worse, let me not deceive myself.
Literary Analysis
This literary analysis was generated with AI and may contain interpretive differences. Provide your analysis in the comments section.
Summary
In Craving for Spring, D. H. Lawrence gives the voice of someone almost physically impatient for renewal. The poem begins with a rejection of winter flowers, especially those that seem to belong to decay, stillness, and a kind of beautiful death. From there, the longing widens into a sweeping vision of spring as a force that does not merely decorate the world but reanimates it from the inside, stirring sap, blossom, animals, and human life alike.
The poem moves by accumulation and urgency: commands, repetitions, and vivid images build a sense of pressure until spring becomes almost cosmic in scale. Yet the longing is mixed with fear. The closing lines suggest that the desire for rebirth is so intense it borders on self-doubt and even mortal anxiety. Lawrence's central tension lies in the fact that life's most exquisite forms seem inseparable from death and corruption, while true spring promises a harder, more generative kind of vitality that the poem desperately wants but cannot yet fully trust.
Theme
- Renewal and rebirth - The poem treats spring as a transformative force that revives both nature and the human spirit, turning winter-bound life toward growth and possibility.
- Rejection of sterile beauty - Lawrence resists flowers that seem too cool, pale, or funerary, suggesting that beauty without vitality feels like a kind of death.
- Vital energy in nature - Sap, blossom, and birdsong all become signs of an underlying creative power that animates the world.
- Fear of corruption and death - The poem keeps returning to decay, mortification, and deathly imagery, showing how closely life and death remain intertwined.
- Human longing for change - The repeated pleas for spring reflect a deep impatience with stagnation and a desire for emotional and bodily renewal.
- Hope mixed with uncertainty - Even while the poem calls for spring, it ends with doubt, revealing how fragile anticipation can feel.
Literary Devices
- Repetition - The repeated calls for spring create urgency and mimic the speaker's restless insistence that change must arrive.
- Imperative mood - Commands such as appeals to spring give the poem a forceful, almost incantatory energy.
- Personification - Spring is treated like an active being that can come, lift, thaw, cajole, and vindicate.
- Metaphor - Seasonal change becomes a metaphor for spiritual and bodily regeneration, not just weather.
- Imagery - Lawrence piles up tactile and visual details of flowers, sap, buds, and birds to make renewal feel immediate and physical.
- Contrast - Pale winter flowers are set against vigorous spring growth, sharpening the poem's conflict between deathlike stillness and living force.
- Hyperbole - The poem enlarges spring into a power capable of tossing the earth and remaking the world, emphasizing its magnitude.
- Alliteration and sound patterning - Repeated consonants and flowing rhythms help imitate surging life and movement.
Symbolism
- Spring - Spring symbolizes renewal, creative force, and the possibility of a more fully alive existence.
- Snowdrops and crocuses - These early flowers can suggest beauty that is still shadowed by coldness, corruption, and mortality.
- Sap - Sap stands for the hidden life-force rising through nature and awakening growth.
- Violets - Violets signal the arrival of true spring and the emergence of life from darkness.
- Wheat and fruit - Harvest and fruit suggest abundance, fertility, and the world's generous ripening.
- Birds and young animals - Chaffinches, throstles, foals, and calves represent the freshness and quickening of life.
- Darkness - Darkness works as the dormant state from which color and growth may finally emerge.
Tone
Lawrence's tone is urgent, impatient, and ardent, but it is also edged with unease. He speaks like someone demanding not just a season but a rescue from stagnation, and his language has the intensity of a fervent prayer or protest. For the reader, the mood shifts between exhilaration and discomfort: the poem feels alive with expectation, yet the repeated references to decay, corruption, and death give that expectation a nervous, almost desperate quality.
Historical Context
D. H. Lawrence wrote during a period when many modern writers were challenging conventional poetic restraint and exploring the body, instinct, and natural energy with unusual directness. His work often resists tidy, decorative nature poetry in favor of something more elemental and physically charged. In that larger modernist context, the poem's sweeping images and emotional directness fit Lawrence's broader interest in life forces, renewal, and the tension between vitality and decay.
The poem also draws on a long literary tradition in which spring represents rebirth, fertility, and hope. At the same time, Lawrence complicates that tradition by making spring feel almost violent in its power and by linking delicate blossoms to mortality. The result is a vision that belongs both to seasonal lyric and to a more unsettling modern sensibility.