The poet of these lines, Edna St. Vincent Millay, imagines a speaker who is sick of spring and everything that goes along with the season changing. Millay employs word choice such as "stickily" in order to make the beauty of new leaves growing on the trees seem grotesque. She also names the leaves as "little" further diminishing the importance of the season changing. The speaker calls out directly to April in the first line ("To what purpose, April, do you return again?"). This line can be read as threatening or condecensing in light of the word choice in the poem as the speaker is angry at April's return. The speaker concluses that "I know what I know," marking themselves as more knowledgable about the world than spring and April.
