'Spring' by Philip Larkin

It seems to have been a pretty long winter. Wasn't it one of the darkest ones on record someone said?

 Time to lighten up, let's go for it.

 Another poem from Larkin's last collection: 'The Less Deceived'

SPRING

 Green-shadowed people sit, or walk in rings,
Their children finger the awakened grass,
Calmly a cloud stands, Calmly a bird sings,
And, flashing like a dangled looking-glass,
Sun lights the balls that bounce, the dogs that bark,
The branch-arrested mist of leaf, and me,
Threading my pursed-way across the park,
An indigestible sterility.

 Spring, of all seasons most gratuitous,
Is fold of untaught flower, is race of water,
Is earth's most multiple, excited daughter;

 And those she has least use for see her best,
Their paths grown craven and circuitous,
Their visions mountain-clear, their needs immodest.
Philip Larkin


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