Cloudy spring morning

My sense of the season is always sharpened by the timely rain which seems to have a cleansing power with it washing away the dirt and grime from a long and cold winter. In this part of Canada as in the far Northwestern China where I was born and grew up, spring always comes so late. I remember how Robert Browning's poem Home thought abroad helped me live vicariously with a British spring in the far and cold northwestern China. Here is the poem which I still can recall from my memory.
Home Thoughts, from Abroad

O, TO be in EnglandNow that April 's there,And whoever wakes in EnglandSees, some morning, unaware,That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheafRound the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,While the chaffinch sings on the orchard boughIn England—now!
And after April, when May follows,And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!Hark, where my blossom'd pear-tree in the hedgeLeans to the field and scatters on the cloverBlossoms and dewdrops—at the bent spray's edge—That 's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,Lest you should think he never could recaptureThe first fine careless rapture!And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,All will be gay when noontide wakes anewThe buttercups, the little children's dower—Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!