Summary
The speaker begins the poem by describing her backyard, unable to enjoy the arrival of spring. Her husband has recently passed away, and she mentions the length of their relationship. She depicts the colorful blossoming of trees and bushes but states that they do not carry the same meaning to her now.
Analysis
This poem explores the idea of loss through the lens of nature. The speaker's titular "lament" is about how she is unable to find the same joy in the yearly renewal of spring after suffering the loss of her husband. It uses its striking images of spring's renewal to accentuate the speaker's inability to find meaning in the natural beauty in front of her.
The poem begins with a clear intimation of tone: "Sorrow is my own yard." The speaker is struggling with painful emotions. However, from there, the poem takes a slightly unexpected turn ("where the new grass / flames as it has flamed / often before but not / with the cold fire / that closes round me this year."). "The new grass flames" because spring is in full bloom. This is surprising in that the reader would likely expect the nature around her to be a reflection of her mournful interiority. But instead of being bleak and frosty, or stormy and dark, her yard is bright and bursting with new life. She immediately notes the gap between her state and that of her surroundings by noting the new sensation that it draws out of her. "The cold fire" that she mentions is a description of the grief that overwhelms her. This is also why she notes that it has encircled her "this year." This reference marks this feeling as specifically new. The lines that follow ("Thirtyfive years / I lived with my husband.") make tangible the source of her pain. She has lost her husband. The detail about the specific number of years they shared together both highlights the length of the marriage and the severity of the loss.
Following this statement, the speaker shifts back to her earlier description of the spring blossom ("The plumtree is white today / with masses of flowers. / Masses of flowers / load the cherry branches") detailing images of an intense beauty. The choice of the phrase "masses of flowers" specifically draws attention to the explosion of life occurring in the speaker's backyard. It is a scene bursting with color and beauty, but it only brings her pain. This feeling occurs in the speaker because she used to enjoy this moment (the first bloom of spring) with her husband. Experiencing it now, alone, only makes her feel his absence more deeply. This depiction is further solidified in the next two lines ("and color some bushes / yellow and some red") as they show a range of bright hues in the bushes and trees that leave the speaker unmoved. The poem continually jumps between these two registers; one in which the speaker shows the wealth of springtime flora before her eyes, and one in which she describes her internal sorrow. They are linked, for her, in that the former only worsens the latter. She takes no comfort in natural beauty. It only reminds her of what she used to share with her husband. The meaning of these blossoming trees has permanently shifted for her.
Like much of Williams poetry, "The Widow's Lament in Springtime" uses direct language and coveys its imagery with a striking immediacy. The speaker does not spend time on lengthy abstractions or complex metaphors. Instead, Williams renders her voice as zeroing in on her feelings and descriptions of nature. The poem also makes extensive use of enjambment, leaving the reader to linger on specific images as they fit the lines together. However, because he employs a speaker that is clearly a character and not himself, there are some differences in tone. Some of the lines are end-stopped with punctuation, showing Williams to be working in a slightly more conventional mode here. As implied by the inclusion of the word "lament" in the title, the poem mirrors a kind of dramatic monologue from the recently widowed speaker.
