'April' is conventionally associated with rejuvenation and fertility, where the earth regenerates from the desolation of winter. This, therefore, explicates the pain of this transformation; it reminds of a more fertile past, suggesting that 'Winter' (which 'kept us warm, covering/ Earth in forgetful snow') is desirable in comparison to the renewal of April, as it numbs and '[covers]' the anguish of modern culture and civilisation. Additionally, the syntax of these two lines appear disjointed and fragmented; the caesurae inhibit the progression of the line, portraying Western society as lacking in coherence and in a state of stagnation and fragmentation. In this opening section, Eliot alludes to Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, where 'April with his showres soote/ The droughte of March hath perced to the roote'. This description starkly contrasts with Eliot's pessimism; by taking these images of rebirth and abundance and opposing their sanguinity, Eliot is able to portray a drastically incongruent view of this change in a dark and ominous tone. .
Words of animation (such as 'mixing' and 'stirring') do imply a glimpse of hope for rebirth and fertility. However, they are placed at the end of lines and, through the use of enjambment, immediately run into a following line where this hint of fertility is lost in the language. The speaker later comments on a 'shower of rain', suggesting the possibility of hope and reproduction, which is abruptly halted as '[they] stopped in the colonnade'; the 'colonnade' obstructs the purifying and revitalising 'shower of rain' which in turn conveys the speaker's (and in turn humanity's) decline to a trite and lifeless existence. The modern banality of civilisation is further presented as the speaker 'drank coffee, and talked for an hour'.
