Posted: Fri Jun 23, 2006 10:37 pm Post subject: Spring
A Prayer in Spring
Robert Frost
Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.
Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.
And make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard,
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid air stands still.
For this is love and nothing else is love,
To which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends he will,
But which it only needs that we fulfill.
Thaw
Over the land freckled with snow half-thawed
The speculating rooks at their nests cawed
And saw from elm-tops, delicate as flower of grass,
What we below could not see, Winter pass.
Edward Thomas (1878-1917)
The Green Linnet
Beneath these fruit-tree boughs that shed
Their snow-white blossoms on my head,
With brightest sunshine round me spread
Of springs unclouded weather,
In this sequestered nook how sweet
To sit upon my orchard-seat!
And birds and flowers once more to greet,
My last year's friends together.
William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
Last edited by God's Warrior on Sat Jun 24, 2006 7:12 am; edited 2 times in total
The roofs are shining from the rain,
The sparrows twitter as they fly,
And with a windy April grace
The little clouds go by.
Yet the back yards are bare and brown
With only one unchanging tree--
I could not be so sure of Spring
Save that it sings in me.
Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)
The first day of spring is one thing, and the first spring day is another. The difference between them is sometimes as great as a month.
Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933)
*************************************
The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You're one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you're two months back in the middle of March.
Robert Frost (1874–1963)
Two Tramps in Mud Time (1936)
shazbot3
All over the meadow,
Where the yellow roses bloom,
Multitudes of violets have opened
With this spring rain.
-Very old Japanese poem-
When the time is ripe for certain things,
these things appear in different places in the manner of violets coming to light in the early spring.
- Farkas Bolyai
A little Madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the King.
Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)
Spring, the sweet spring, is the year's pleasant king;
Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring,
Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing.
Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!
Thomas Nashe (1567–1601)
Summer's Last Will and Testament (1600)
Sweet April showers
Do spring May flowers.
Thomas Tusser (1524?–1580)
A Hundred Good Points of Husbandry (1557)
For winter's rains and ruins are over,
And all the season of snows and sins;
The days dividing lover and lover,
The light that loses, the night that wins;
And time remembered is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
And in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom the spring begins.
Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909)
Keep your faith in all beautiful things;
in the sun when it is hidden,
in the Spring when it is gone.
- Roy R. Gilson
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough.
A.E. Housman (1859–1936)
When the April wind wakes the call for the soil, I hold the plough as my only hold upon the earth, and, as I follow through the fresh and fragrant furrow, I am planted with every foot-step, growing, budding, blooming into a spirit of spring.
- Dallas Lore Sharp, 1870-1929
Song of Solomon 2:12 (KJV)
The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land;
Matthew Arnold:
Is it so small a thing
To have enjoy'd the sun,
To have lived light in the spring,
To have loved, to have thought, to have done...
************************************
William Wordsworth:
Written in Early Spring
I heard a thousand blended notes
While in a grove I sate reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.
To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran;
And much it grieved my heart to think
What Man has made of Man.
Through primrose tufts, in that sweet bower,
The periwinkle trail'd its wreaths;
And 'tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.
The birds around me hopp'd and play'd,
Their thoughts I cannot measure,—
But the least motion which they made
It seem'd a thrill of pleasure.
The budding twigs spread out their fan
To catch the breezy air;
And I must think, do all I can,
That there was pleasure there.
If this belief from heaven be sent,
If such be Nature's holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament
What Man has made of Man?
Anne Bradstreet: If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant; if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.
Edna St. Vincent Millay: April comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.
Helen Hayes: All through the long winter, I dream of my garden. On the first day of spring, I dig my fingers deep into the soft earth. I can feel its energy, and my spirits soar.
Margaret Atwood: In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.
Spring makes its own statement, so loud and clear
that the gardener seems to be only one of the instruments,
not the composer. Geoffrey B. Charlesworth
It is dry, hazy June weather. We are more of the earth,
farther from heaven these days.
Henry David Thoreau
No matter how long the winter, spring is sure to follow.
Proverb from Guinea
May is a pious fraud of the almanac.
James R. Lowell, 1819 - 1891
The first day of spring is one thing, and the first spring day is another.
The difference between them is sometimes as great as a month.
Henry Van Dyke, Fisherman's Luck, 1899
When the April wind wakes the call for the soil, I hold the plough as my only hold upon the earth, and, as I follow through the fresh and fragrant furrow, I am planted with every foot-step, growing, budding, blooming into a spirit of spring. Dallas Lore Sharp - 1870-1929
Walking on willow tree roads by a river dappled
with peach blossoms,
I look for spring light, but am everywhere lost.
Birds fly up and scatter floating catkins.
A ponderous wave of flowers sags the branches.
Wang Wei, 699-761
Gardening imparts an organic perspective on the passage of time. - William Cowper
Sweet April showers
Do spring May flowers.
Thomas Tusser -1557
The seasons, like greater tides, ebb and flow across the continents. Spring advances up the United States at the average rate of about fifteen miles a day. It ascends mountainsides at the rate of about a hundred feet a day. It sweeps ahead like a flood of water, racing down the long valleys, creeping up hillsides in a rising tide. Most of us, like the man who lives on the bank of a river and watches the
stream flow by, see only one phase of the movement of spring. Each year the season advances toward us out of the south, sweeps around us, goes flooding away to the north.
Edwin Way Teale, North with the Spring
A swarm of bees in May
Is worth a load of hay;
A swarm of bees in June
Is worth a silver spoon;
A swarm of bees in July
Is not worth a fly.
Rhyme from England
Let us dance in the sun, wearing wild flowers in our hair
and let us huddle together as darkness takes over
We are at home amidst the birds and the trees,
for we are children of nature.
Susan Polis Shutz
Winter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart.
Victor Hugo
On this June day the buds in my garden are almost as enchanting as the open flowers. Things in bud bring, in the heat of a June noontide, the recollection of the loveliest days of the year - those days of May when all is suggested, nothing yet fulfilled. Francis King
The true harbinger of spring is not crocuses or swallows returning to Capistrano, but the sound of the bat on the ball. Bill Veeck
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough.
A. E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad, 1896
I don't know what smell of wet earth or rotting leaves brought back my childhood with a rush and all the happy days I had spent in a garden. Shall I ever forget that day? It was the beginning of my real life, my coming of age as it were, and entering into my kingdom.
Early March, gray, quiet skies, and brown, quiet earth; leafless and sad and lonely enough out there in the damp and silence, yet there I stood feeling the same rapture of pure delight in the first breath of spring that I used to as a child, and the five wasted years fell from me like a cloak, and the world was full of hope, and I vowed myself then and there to nature and have been happy ever since.
Elizabeth von Arnim, Elizabeth & Her German Garden, 1898
A potent blood hath modest May.
Ralph W. Emerson, 1803 - 1882
To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state
of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.
George Santayana
O the green things growing the green things growing,
The fair sweet smell of the green things growing.
Dinah Mulock Craik
The world's favorite season is the spring.
All things seem possible in May.
Edwin Way Teale
O Day after day we can't help growing older.
Year after year spring can't help seeming younger.
Come let's enjoy our winecup today,
Nor pity the flowers fallen.
Wang Wei, On Parting with Spring
One of the greatest virtues of gardening is this perpetual renewal of youth and spring, of promise of flower and fruit that can always be read in the open book of the garden, by those with an eye to see, and a mind to understand.
E.A. Bowles
You can't see Canada across Lake Erie, but you know it's there. It's the same with spring. You have to have faith, especially in Cleveland. Paul Fleischman, Seedfolks
Break open
A cherry tree
And there are no flowers,
But the spring breeze
Brings forth myriad blossoms.
Ikkyu Sojun, 1394-1481
Spring unlocks the flowers to paint the laughing soil.
Reginald Heber
The hum of bees is the voice of the garden.
Elizabeth Lawrence
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