This poem is unique in Browning's oeuvre, as one of the few where his concerns are

primarily natural and descriptive. Certainly, much of Browning's poetry employs

descriptive passages, but his primary concern is almost always men and their
psychologies, with the natural passages working to compliment those themes;
examples are "Love Among the Ruins" and "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came."
It was written in 1845 and published in Dramatic Romances and Lyrics, during a long
period in which Browning and his family lived abroad in Italy. On its surface, the poem's
message is quite simple: he misses home and is melancholy as he imagines the beauty
that is overtaking his native country as spring approaches. Spring, as an image of
flowering, carries poetically the sense of the world awakening. In its celebration of this
natural phenomenon, the poem owes a lot to the Romantic tradition of poetry, which
sought to transcend human limitations through contemplation of natural beauty.
However, the poem does employ a few unique elements. First is the perspective that
the poet employs. In the third line, he reveals that much of what guides his reflection is
the thought of being somebody else there. In other words, he is not reveling in his own
memories but rather imagining what "whoever wakes in England" might see. This gives
the whole descriptive poem an idealized air, a sense that what he sees in his mind is an
imagining rather than an objective fact.

The second stanza, which is longer than the first and uses longer lines, raises the
intensity of his longing as this idealized portrait takes him over. The image of the thrush,
who sings his song twice "lest you think he never could recapture" his initial beauty,
reinforces the exaggerated beauty Browning imagines. His native England does not
offer priceless, once-in-a-lifetime moments; on the contrary, it is overflowing with
moments of beauty. When his mind moves to a less picturesque setting – "fields [that]
look rough with hoary dew" – he is quick to force his imaginings so that they are
redeemed by the "noontide." All in all, what we glimpse is that this reflection is not a
mindless wandering through the past, but rather a willful attempt to escape the "gaudy
melon-flower" that apparently fails to capture the same depth of feeling as he believes
his England might.

So in the end, the poem does employ a psychological nature in that the speaker is
deliberately calling to mind these images in order to distract himself from something.
The placement of perspective in someone else's mind falls in line with Browning's usual
poetic aesthetic (in which he speaks through characters) and thereby compromises the
objective reality of what he imagines. Finally, one is led to wonder why, considering the
poet is so mournfully desperate for the English springtime, he does not think of moving
back. The fact that such a thought does not enter the poem suggests that it can be
understood as a momentary idyll rather than as a deep, permanent expression of the
speaker's soul. As the months of springtime pass, so will this daydream, but its
transience does not mean it is insignificant.

Lines 1-2

Oh, to be in England
Now that April's there,
  It looks like we have a speaker with itchy feet on our hands—if you can picture
that.
 The guy (we're just assuming it's a guy at this point—check out "Speaker" for
more) wants to be in England.
 We also get the time of year when he makes his wish: April.
 For some reason, April has significance for our speaker. It seems, too, that it
might have significance for England, since April is "there."
 Does that mean that April isn't "here," wherever the speaker is? Is this guy
trapped in some kind of inter-dimensional time portal?
 We'll just have to keep reading…

Lines 3-8

And whoever wakes in England

Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England—now!

 No, it doesn't look like our speaker is a time traveler after all. He's just got an
active imagination.
 Specifically, he's imagining someone (not him) waking up in England—right at
the moment he's talking to us in this poem.
 That imagined person is seeing some pretty neat stuff (at least, according to the
speaker).
 The person is noticing how little leaves are budding on the trunk and lower
branches ("boughs") of the elm tree.
 It looks like this is the first time that this person has noticed that, because the
speaker tells us that they were previously "unaware."
 Botany notes: the "brushwood sheaf" is referring to those new saplings that start
to spring off the main trunk of a tree and the "bole" is just a fancy name for a
trunk.
 Where there are trees, there are birdies, and this tree is no exception. A tiny
songbird—achaffinch—is chirping away in the branches of this orchard.
 And, in case you forgot in the past few lines, the speaker reminds us that this is
all going down in England, where he is not.
  Before we head off to the second stanza, we'll just note that we have some
serious end rhymes going on in these lines. We tell you all about what they're
doing there over in "Form and Meter."

Lines 9-13

And after April, when May follows,

And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!
Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops—at the bent spray's edge—

 Our speaker is now fast-forwarding into next month. That would be… May, for
those of you whose calendar apps are broken.
 May is a time when the whitethroat builds its nest. The speaker doesn't mention a
nest, but since the whitethroat is another small bird, we're assuming that he's not
talking about building a muscle car.
 This whitethroat has company, as it turns out: lots of swallows.
 "Listen up," the speaker is saying ("Hark"). He directs our attention to a—still
imagined—pear tree that's growing about of a row of bushes ("hedge").
 Its branches are leaning over a field ("bent spray") and are covered in fruit
blossoms that fall, with the dew, to the ground below.

Lines 14-20

That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,

Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children's dower
—Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!

 Here's what the speaker is telling us to listen to: a thrush.

 This bird tends to repeat itself, which can be kind of annoying in a person, but
seems cooler for a bird.
  The speaker thinks so, anyway. He says that the thrush sings each song twice
just to prove you wrong, if you thought that it couldn't repeat the carefree
awesomeness ("careless rapture!") of song #1.
 We get some added scenery now, which might look a bit rough in the morning.
The speaker describes the fields as having some grayish-white ("hoary") dew
over them.
 Still, they look less run-down once the sun comes up and perks up all
the buttercups.
 The speaker busts out a metaphor to explain that these flowers are a children's
"dower." A dower can be either the money a husband leaves to his wife when he
dies, or what a wife's family gives as a wedding present to her husband.
 In either case, the comparison doesn't really fit here when it comes to children.
The idea more broadly, though, is that these buttercups are a gift to enjoy.
 "Dower" also has the added benefit of rhyming with "flower," which is what the
speaker is complaining about in the last line.
 Specifically, he lets us know that those buttercups that he's imagining are way
better than what he's got in front of him: "this gaudy melon-flower!" (20).
 Now, "gaudy" means overly showy and tasteless. You can be the judge of that.
 According to our speaker, things are way better in May, in England, than the
melon flower scene where he is.
 For some insights about where this might be—*cough*Italy*cough*—check out
"In a Nutshell."
 We do know that it takes a little more heat to bring out a melon flower than it
does to bring out a buttercup (thank you, science), so the odds are here that the
speaker's not really enjoying the kind of cool, but sunny, spring that England is
known for. He's more likely sweating all over this lame melon flower.
 With this last complaint, the speaker's done wishing to be somewhere else—for
now at least.