'of all seasons most gratuitous'

It's the first day of Astronomical Spring, the weather has warmed up, and the sun is shining from a blue sky as if at the beginning of a primary-school essay titled 'A Spring Day'. Who better to spoil the mood than dear old Philip Larkin? Here is his poem 'Spring', a Petrarchan sonnet that is not exactly full of the joys thereof –

Green-shadowed people sit, or walk in rings,
Their children finger the awakened grass,
Calmly a cloud stands, calmly a bird sings,
And, flashing like a dangled-looking glass,
Sun lights the balls that bounce, the dogs that bark,
The branch-arrested mist of leaf, and me,
Threading my pursed-up way across the park,
An indigestible sterility.

Spring, of all seasons most gratuitous,
Is fold of untaught flower, is race of water
Is earth’s most multiple, excited daughter;

And those she has least use for see her best,
Their paths grown craven and circuitous,

Their visions mountain-clear, their needs immodest. 

That poem is dated 19 May 1950. On this date (20 March) in the same year, Larkin wrote (or signed off on) this curious take on the writer's life. I like the second section particularly...

The Literary World

I
‘Finally, after five months of my life during which I could write nothing that would have satisfied me, and for which no power will compensate me…’

My dear Kafka,
When you’ve had five years of it, not five months,
Five years of an irresistible force meeting an
immoveable object right in your belly,
Then you’ll know about depression.

II
Mrs. Alfred Tennyson

Answered
begging letters
admiring letters
insulting letters
enquiring letters
business letters
and publishers’ letters.
She also
looked after his clothes
saw to his food and drink
entertained visitors
protected him from gossip and criticism
And finally

(apart from running the household)
Brought up and educated the children.

While all this was going on
Mister Alfred Tennyson sat like a baby
Doing his poetic business.