17 pages • 34 minutes read
The Spring And The Fall
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Themes
The Fleeting Nature of Love
Although the title is "The Spring and the Fall,” Millay's poem, as it turns out, isn’t about the seasons so much as about love. Millay uses these periods of the year to address love: the main theme of the poem.
Love blooms with the spring season in Stanza 1. Springtime means the rebirth of nature, and, in terms of the speaker and her "dear” (Line 2), their love is blossoming, as well. The wet bark of the black trees in Line 3 suggest fecundity: Organic matter needs water to grow, and the dampness of the trees is an image of this.
The link between spring, growth, and love becomes explicit in the final two lines in Stanza 1 when the man gets the speaker a "blossoming peach” (Line 5). The gesture symbolizes his love: He does something valiant for the woman. It's not easy to get the peach; it's out of the way. Yet the man does not mind the inconvenience. He and the speaker are in the springtime, and their love, like the peach tree, is blooming.
In Stanza 2, fall arrives, and the change of seasons represents a change in the relationship. Fall is the season of death, and it's in fall when the couple's love diminishes and disappears. Instead of wet trees and blossoming peaches, there's the "raucous trill” (Line 9) of crows. Predatory birds that tend to congregate in packs, the crows, or "rooks” (Line 9), symbolize an attack on love. Love further endures attack from the man. The romance is gone as the man laughs at what the speaker admires. The couple is now in the fall. They're falling out of love and into destructive acrimony.
The speaker confronts the fleeting nature of love with melancholy acceptance. She's sad her relationship is over, but she realizes that "love's going” (Line 17) is as much a part of life as the fleeting seasons. There's nothing she nor anyone can do to freeze the undulations of such a potent emotion.
The "Little" Nature of Love
In addition to the fleeting nature of love, Millay's poem addresses the smaller aspects of love. Love is not a series of grand gestures, but a compendium of little moments. It's a combination of signs and signals.
The miniature idea of love is demonstrated in the speaker's actions. In the greater context of love, what the dear man does in the poem isn't that big of a deal. It doesn't qualify as a grand or dramatic gesture. It lacks the drama of other representations of love, like the fatal love in William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet (ca 1595) or the animalistic love in Tennessee Williams's play A Streetcar Named Desire (1947). However, in Millay's poem, where love comes and goes in "little ways” (Line 12 and 18), the action of the man grabbing the peach from a lofty branch is impressive.
Since love doesn't appear in large ways, it also doesn't leave in a theatrical manner. The man doesn't do anything overtly cruel to the speaker to signal that their love is gone—he doesn't verbally or physically abuse her, nor does he cheat on her. What the speaker does is laugh. He makes fun of all that the speaker "dared to praise” (Line 11). The man's contempt for what the woman likes lets her know that their love is in a precarious position. The laughter is another little part of love and love's loss that, in turn, breaks the speaker’s heart in "little ways” (Line 12).
Indeed, what bothers the speaker isn't that love goes away and, by consequence, comes around again. The point of contention is the "little ways” (Line 18) that love tends to leave the speaker feeling forlorn. It's the small proofs of love and its absence that most bother the speaker. The minute nature of love continues to trouble and discomfort her.
Fate and Accepting the Inevitable
While the speaker struggles with the fleeting tininess of love, she also accepts it as a fact—or, more specifically, a fact of her life. In this way, Millay's poem also involves the theme of fate. There's a sense of inevitability in the poem. Just as spring and fall come and go, the speaker and her partner fall in and out of love. However, the knowledge that this will happen doesn't lessen the speaker's pain. The "little ways” (Line 12 and 18) that love predictably arrives and vanishes doesn't make the speaker less upset. If anything, the cyclical nature of love brings her further anguish.
Indeed, in the last two lines of the poem, the speaker summarizes her connection with love and its fateful termination: "’Tis not love’s going hurts my days, / But that it went in little ways” (Lines 17-18). Both love and days come and go—it's a part of life's fabric. Yes, the speaker can accept that it's more or less her destiny for love to stay awhile and then move along. Yet she can't seem to accept her fate that love continually leaves in "little ways.” It's as though she wishes she had a different lot in life.
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By Edna St. Vincent Millay
