This is one of the loveliest poems I know about that slow transition from dark days to light, from winter to spring, from February to March.
Full of sentiment but not sentimental, because Larkin isn't remembering golden days of childhood, and he is well aware of the frostiness and chill that have their equivalent in human relationships – but Larkin's capacity to see beyond winter is optimism sensibly restrained – and "it will be spring soon" is a refrain echoing that most thrilling of bird songs, the mavis or song thrush.
The song of the thrush and the extending light of day are intimations of life though, new possibility, coming opportunities, including that great human healer of tired spirits, laughter. I've never lost the love of bird song first instilled in the mind but installed in the heart through a childhood spent on farms in Ayrshire and Lanarkshire. I can still identify dozens of them, and sadly miss some that used to be common – the Yellow Hammer and Curlew being two favourites now seldom heard unless you go to where you know they still have a foothold on a land so greedily messed up by us lot!
So Larkin's poem is a nostalgic reminder that our world's beauty is fragile, is gift, and is entirely provisional on our capacity to value, appreciate and protect it. (The photo is by Nigel Pye from Aberdeen University – I found it
Coming
On longer evenings,
Light, chill and yellow,
Bathes the serene
Foreheads of houses.
A thrush sings,
Laurel-surrounded
In the deep bare garden,
Its fresh-peeled voice
Astonishing the brickwork.
It will be spring soon,
It will be spring soon –
And I, whose childhood
Is a forgotten boredom,
Feel like a child
Who comes on a scene
Of adult reconciling,
And can understand nothing
But the unusual laughter,
And starts to be happy.
Philip Larkin
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