To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Millay expresses all these great qualities of Spring—the flowers, the smell, the leaves—only to eventually diss them and say that such beauty only gives us a false sense that grotesques and death do not exist.
Spring