Leafless Vines

The leafless vines represent a more realistic, observed Spring associated with decay. The speaker emphasizes this and various other images of decomposition and stagnation – for example, “cold wind,” the “muddy fields,” “patches of standing water,” and “dead brown leaves” rather than traditional idealized notions of a Spring characterized by tropes of rebirth, revitalization, and renewal (4-5, 7, 12). In detailing a realistic portrait of the natural elements, the speaker demonstrates a prioritization of sensory and visual experience, rather than regurgitating classical tropes.

Spring

Spring represents the process of creating linguistic meaning that is simultaneously dependent on one’s immediately observed environment. As the speaker observes how “One by one objects are defined– / It quickens” and how “the profound change / has come upon them: rooted they grip down and begin to awaken,” his mind undergoes the same processes of “[definition],” “[quickening],” “[rooting],” and “[gripping] down” while internally attaching...