I see this poem, with that wonderfully evocative last line about the brilliant silence, as relating properly to one of those first fine days in early March, but spring our way has been so late this year that it was not till last Saturday we had weather of the kind to bring this poem to mind. Now we are in the middle of a mini-heatwave and the countryside is going mad with bluebells and blossom, as if the whole dammed-up season has burst its banks and overflowed in one day.

From ‘Spring Nature Notes’

The sun lies mild and still on the yard stones.

The clue is a solitary daffodil – the first.

And the whole air struggling in soft excitements
Like a woman hurrying into her silks.
Birds everywhere zipping and unzipping
Changing their minds, in soft excitements,
Warming their voyage and trying their voices.

The trees still spindle bare.

Beyond them, from the warmed blue hills
An exhilaration swirls upward, like a huge fish.
As under the waterfall, in the bustling pool.

Over the whole land
Spring thunders down in brilliant silence.

Ted Hughes