Claude McKay’s “Spring in New Hampshire” dramatizes the human attraction to beauty as the world is coming alive in the springtime of the year. The versanelle features two sestets, each with the rime scheme, ABABCC.
First Sestet: “Too green the springing April grass”
The speaker sings his lyrical tribute to the state of New Hampshire and to the season of new birth by universalizing himself, that is, he does not employ the first person pronoun as actor in the poem. His self reference appears only in the prepositional phrase “[f]or me.”
The “springing April grass,” the speaker avers, is “[t]oo green” and the sky is “[t]oo blue” with its “silver-speckle[s].” Because the grass is too green and the sky is too blue, the speaker insists that he cannot remain indoors.
He also is finding remaining indoors difficult because “happy winds go laughing by.” He is urged by inner urgings of joy to go outside and enjoy the new awakening of the earth that the spring is heralding.
He does not want to continue “wasting the golden hours indoors.” He especially finds the mundane task of “washing windows and scrubbing floors” a waste of his time, when outside the world is burgeoning with the beauty of nature and warm caressing breezes.
Second Sestet: “Too wonderful the April night”
The pattern of the second sestet follows that of the first. Again, the speaker intrudes in his tribute only by placing his pronoun self reference in the same prepositional phrase, “[f]or me.] Again, the speaker finds the attributes of spring too alluring for him to ignore.
In the second sestet of the versanelle, the speaker addresses the spring’s beautiful attributes of night. The April night is “[t]oo wonderful” and the “first May flowers” are “[t]oo faintly sweet” and thus the speaker cannot “spend the evening hours” indoors.
In addition to the wonders of the April night with its sweet smelling May flowers, the “fields are fresh,” and fish are “leaping” up out the streams, inviting him to come outside and enjoy the night that is alive with springtime awakening.
Instead of remaining inside and despite the fact that he is tired from a day’s work, he does not want to waste the spring beauty “dully sleeping.”
Commentary
In both sestets, the speaker moves from the sublime to the mundane. He first declares that the beauties of the day, the too green grass and the too blue sky, motivate him to go outside. And he ends the sestet by mentioning the mundane work he wants to abandon for the sublime enjoyment of the warm, spring day.
In the second sestet addressing the alluring features of the night, he finds the night too wonderful and May flowers too sweet to remain inside just mundanely sleeping.
The speaker offers a glorious tribute to the season of rebirth by dramatizing the appealing qualities that allure him to step outside in New Hampshire to enjoy the ambiance of spring weather.
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