Awake, thou wintry earth - Fling off thy sadness! Fair vernal flowers, laugh forth Your ancient gladness!

In a brief apostrophe to nature, the speaker urges the “wintry earth” to wake and cast off its seasonal “sadness,” calling on spring flowers to “laugh forth” their “ancient gladness.” The diction personifies earth and flowers as capable of mood and memory, turning the annual transition from winter to spring into a moral-emotional renewal. “Ancient” suggests a recurring, time-tested joy—spring’s return as a perennial restoration rather than a novelty. Read figuratively, the lines can serve as an exhortation to human spirits as well: to shake off despondency and recover a long-known capacity for delight, as reliably as the natural world reawakens.