Williams starts the poem with the stark contrast between Icarus' falling and the spring, which immediately evokes the paradox which is at the poem's core: birth and death are two sides of the same coin. Then he gradually develops the spring motif as a metaphor of birth, abundance, and profusion. When the image of pageantry "concerned with itself" comes to a climax, we are reminded again of the birth/death contrast - the sun, which nurtures the whole nature, melts the wings of a flying boy, causing his drowning. The whole poem, short as it is, is an expanded contrast between rising and falling, thriving and dying.