Early in March the crocuses crept alight, then blazed yellow and purple in the park. The whistle was blown later: it was possible to walk there after tea. In fact, it is about five o' clock in an evening that the first hour of spring strikes - autumn arrives in the early morning, but spring at the close of a winter day. The air, about to darken, quickens and is run through with mysterious white light; the curtain of darkness is suspended as though for some unprecedented event. There is perhaps no sunset, the trees are not yet budding - but the senses receive an intimation so fine, yet striking in so directly, that this appears a moment in one's own spirit. This exalts whatever feeling is in the heart. No moment in human experience approaches in its intensity this experience of the solitary earth's. The later phases of spring, when her foot is in at the door, are met with a conventional gaity. But her first unavowed presence is disconcerting; silences fall in company - the wish to be either alone or with a lover is avowed by some look or some spontaneous movement - the window being thrown open, the glance away up the street. In cities the traffic lightens and quickens; even buildings take such feelings of depth that the streets might be rides cut through a wood. What is happening is only acknowledged between strangers, by looks, or between lovers. Unwritten poetry twists the hearts of people in their thirties. To the person out walking that first evening of spring, nothing appears inanimate, nothing not sentient: darkening chimneys, viaducts, villas, glass-and-steel factories, chain stores seem to strike as deep as natural rocks, seem not only to exist but to dream. Atoms of light quiver between the branches of stretching up black trees. It is in the unearthly first hour of spring twilight that earth's almost agonised livingness is most felt. This hour is so dreadful to some people that they hurry indoors and turn on the lights - they are pursued by the scent of violets sold on the kerb.
Elizabeth Bowen - The Death of the Heart
