Spring

God's Warrior · 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)

God's Warrior

April

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)

God's Warrior

Spring

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

God's Warrior

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?

God's Warrior

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

God's Warrior

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

God's Warrior

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

God's Warrior

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

God's Warrior

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

God's Warrior

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

God's Warrior

The afternoon is bright,
with spring in the air,
a mild March afternoon,
with the breath of April stirring,
I am alone in the quiet patio
looking for some old untried illusion -
some shadow on the whiteness of the wall
some memory asleep
on the stone rim of the fountain,
perhaps in the air
the light swish of some trailing gown.
Antonio Machado, 1875-1939

God's Warrior

And Spring arose on the garden fair,
Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere;
And each flower and herb on Earth's dark breast
rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.
Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Sensitive Plant, 1820
Plum blossoms:
My Spring
Is Ecstasy.
Issa

First a howling blizzard woke us,
Then the rain came down to soak us,
And now before the eye can focus -
Crocus.
Lilja Rogers

Blessed be the Lord for the beauty of summer and spring, for the air, the water, the verdure, and the song of birds.
Carl von Linnaeus

When the hounds of Spring are on winter's traces,
The mother of months in meadow or plain
Fills the shadows and windy places
With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain.
Swinburne

Jacaranda blue
crowns treetops in roadside show--
Springtime anew
Victor Gendrano, Haiku and Senryu Harvests

God's Warrior

daylight and darkness
Spring
balanced
Mike Garofalo, Cuttings

Certain miracles that I beheld there have haunted my memory ever since: a gray April morning of sirocco, when the almond blossoms, the flaming tulips, the young green of the vines, hung as if painted on the motionless air; a summer night when the roses had an unearthly pallor under a half-eaten moon, whose ghostliness was somehow one with their perfume and with the phosphorescence of dew tipping their petals; a day when the trees stood part submerged in fog, into which leaves dropped slowly, slowly, one after another, and sank out of sight.
H. G. Dwight, Gardens and Gardening, Atlantic Monthly, 1912

The naked earth is warm with Spring,
And with green grass and bursting trees
Leans to the sun's kiss glorying,
And quivers in the sunny breeze.
Julian Grenfell

God's Warrior

In the same way, you were happy in spring,
With the half colors of quarter-things,
The slightly brighter sky, the melting clouds,
The single bird, the obscure moon-
The obscure moon lighting an obscure world
Of thing that would never be quite expressed,
Where you yourself were never quite yourself
And did not want nor have to be ...
Wallace Stevens, The Motive for Metaphor

Hoe while it is spring, and enjoy the best anticipations.
It is not much matter if things do not turn out well.
Charles Dudley Warner

Summer makes me drowsy,
Autumn makes me sing,
Winter’s pretty lousy,
but I hate Spring.
Dorothy Parker

Spring shows what God can do
with a drab and dirty world.
Virgil A. Kraft

God's Warrior

Autumn arrives in the early morning, but spring at the close of a winter day. Elizabeth Bowen

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, Atalanta in Calydon

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 come over the sunlit arch,
And wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you're two months back in the middle of March.
Robert Frost

God's Warrior

The year's at the spring
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hill-side's dew-pearled;
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn:
God's in his heaven,
All's right with the world!
Robert Browning

In June as many as a dozen species may burst their buds on a single day.
No man can heed all of these anniversaries; no man can ignore all of them.
Aldo Leopold

To the Garden of the World
Walt Whitman,

To the garden of the world anew descending,
Potent mates, daughters, sons, preluding,
The love, the life of their bodies, meaning and being,
Curious here behold my resurrection after slumber,
The revolving cycles in their wide sweep having brought me again,
amorous, mature, all beautiful to me, all wondrous,
My limbs and the quivering fire that ever plays through them, for reasons, most wondrous,
Existing I peer and penetrate still,
Content with the present, content with the past,
By my side or back of me Eve following,
Or in front, and I following her just the same.

God's Warrior

My heart that was rapt away by the wild cherry blossoms -
will it return to my body when they scatter?
Kotomichi

Sprigs of plum by the corner of the wall
Are blooming alone in the cold;
If not for the subtle fragrance drifting over
Who could tell this from snow on the boughs.
Wang Anshi, Plum Blossom, 1060

Spring would not be spring without bird songs.
Francis M. Chapman

Reaching for the heart
of spring--
wind from tree to tree.
Aro (1879-1951)

God's Warrior

The month of May was come, when every lusty heart beginneth to blossom, and to bring forth fruit; for like as herbs and trees bring forth fruit and flourish in May, in likewise every lusty heart that is in any manner a lover, springeth and flourisheth in lusty deeds. For it giveth unto all lovers courage, that lusty month of May.
Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte d'Arthur, 1485

Are we to look at cherry blossoms only in full bloom, the moon only when it is cloudless? To long for the moon while looking on the rain, to lower the blinds and be unaware of the passing of the spring - these are even more deeply moving. Branches about to blossom or gardens strewn with flowers are worthier of our admiration.
Yoshida Kenko

Earth is dry to the center,
But spring, a new comer,
A spring rich and strange,
Shall make the winds blow
Round and round,
Thro' and thro' ,
Here and there,
Till the air
And the ground
Shall be fill'd with life anew.
Alfred Tennyson, Nothing Will Die

God's Warrior

The air and the earth interpenetrated in the warm gusts
of spring; the soil was full of sunlight, and the sunlight full
of red dust. The air one breathed was saturated with
earthy smells, and the grass under foot
had a reflection of the blue sky in it.
Willa Cather

I wondered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils.
William Wordsworth

I think that no matter how old or infirm I may become,
I will always plant a large garden in the spring. Who can
resist the feelings of hope and joy that one gets from
participating in nature's rebirth?
Edward Giobbi

May and June. Soft syllables, gentle names for the two best months in the garden year: cool, misty mornings gently burned away with a warming spring sun, followed by breezy afternoons and chilly nights. The discussion of philosophy is over; it's time for work to begin.
Peter Loewer

To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter; to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird’s nest or a wildflower in spring — these
are some of the rewards of the simple life.
John Burroughs

Spring is when you feel like whistling even with a shoe full of slush. Doug Larson

God's Warrior

I love spring anywhere, but if I could choose
I would always greet it in a garden.
Ruth Stout

If Spring came but once in a century, instead of once a year, or burst forth with the sound of an earthquake, and not in silence, what wonder and expectation there would be in all hearts to behold the miraculous change! But now the silent succession suggests nothing but necessity. To most men only the cessation of the miracle would be miraculous and the perpetual exercise of God's power seems less wonderful than its withdrawal would be.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Sweetly breathing , vernal air,
That with kind warmth doth repair
Winter's ruins; from whose breast
All the gums and spice of the East
Borrow their perfumes; whose eye
Gilds the morn, and clears the sky.
Thomas Carew, 1595 - 1645

In the scenery of spring,
nothing is better, nothing worse;
The flowering branches are
of themselves, some short, some long.
Ryokan

God's Warrior

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

April hath put a spirit of youth in everything.
William Shakespeare

April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land, 1922

Only in dreams of spring
Shall I ever see again
The flowering of my cherry trees.
Frances Hodgson Burnett

Mine is the time of foliage,
When hills and valleys teem
With buds and vines sweet scented,
All clothed in glowing green.

My nights are bright and starry,
My days are long and clear
And truly I'm the fairest,
Of all months in the year.
Mary Fordham

God's Warrior

So Spring comes merry towards me here, but earns
No answering smile from me, whose life is twin'd
With the dead boughs that winter still must bind,
And whom today the Spring no more concerns.
Behold, this crocus is a withering flame;
This snowdrop, snow; this apple-blossom's part
To breed the fruit that breeds the serpent's art.
Nay, for these Spring-flowers, turn thy face from them,
Nor stay till on the year's last lily-stem
The white cup shrivels round the golden heart.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Barren Spring, 1870

Science has never drummed up quite as effective
a tranquilizing agent as a sunny spring day.
W. Earl Hall

One week later ...
Six Directions of Green
Billions of leaf-buds
Mike Garofalo, Cuttings

The country habit has me by the heart,
For he's bewitched forever who has seen,
Not with his eyes but with his vision, Spring
Flow down the woods and stipple leaves with sun.
Vita Sackville-West

Again rejoicing Nature sees
Her robe assume its vernal hues
Her leafy locks wave in the breeze,
All freshly steep'd in the morning dews.
Robert Burns

God's Warrior

Happiness? The color of it must be spring green, impossible to describe until I see a just-hatched lizard sunning on a stone. That color, the glowing green lizard skin, repeats in every new leaf. ... The regenerative power of nature explodes in every weed, stalk, branch. Working in the mild sun, I feel the green fuse of my body, too. Surges
of energy, kaleidoscopic sunlight through the leaves, the soft breeze that makes me want to say the word "zephyr" - this mindless simplicity can be called happiness.
Frances, Mayes, Bella Tuscany: The Sweet Life in Italy,

It is one of the first days of Spring, and I sit once more in the old garden where I hear no faintest echo of the obscene rumbling of London streets which are yet so little away. Here the only movement I am conscious of is that of the trees shooting forth their first sprays of bright green, and
of the tulips expanding the radiant beauty of their flaming globes, and the only sound I hear is the blackbird's song -- the liquid softly gurgling notes that seem to well up spontaneously from an infinite joy, an infinite peace,
at the heart of nature and bring a message not from some remote Heaven of the Sky or Future, but the Heaven that is Here, beneath our feet, even beneath the exquisite texture of our own skins, the joy, the peace, at the Heart of the Mystery which is Man. For man alone can hear the
Revelation that lies in the blackbird's song.
Havelock Ellis, Impressions and Comments, 1918

God's Warrior

Swiftly the years, beyond recall,
Solemn the stillness of this fair morning,
I will clothe myself in spring-clothing,
And visit the slopes of the Eastern Hill,
By the mountain-stream a mist hovers,
Hovers a moment, then scatters,
There comes a wind blowing from the south
That brushes the fields of new corn.
Chinese poem, Author Unknown

The crocuses and the larch turning green every year a week before the others and the pastures red with uneaten sheep's placentas and the long summer days and the newmown hay and the wood pigeon in the morning and the cuckoo in the afternoon and the corncrake in the evening and the wasps in the jam and the smell of grose and the look of the gorse and the apples falling and the children
walking in the dead leaves and the larch turning brown a week before the others and the chestnuts falling and the howling winds and the sea breaking over the pier and the first fires and the hooves on the road and the consumptive postman whistling "The Roses are Blooming in Picardy" and the standard oil-lamp and of course the snow and to be sure the sleet and bless your heart the slush and
every fourth year the February debacle and the endless April showers and the crocuses and then the whole bloody business starting all over again."
Samuel Beckett, Watt

Now every field is clothed with grass, and every tree with leaves;
Now the woods put forth their blossoms, and the year assumes it's gay attire.
Virgil

March in the garden -
my hostess shows me brown sticks
and speaks of flowers
Sister Benedicta

God's Warrior

Ahh, the wide almond groves in full white flower
Stunning in the morning sun.
Old naked Winter in his garb of grays and browns has run.
Forsythia blooms come and go in the blink of a yellow Eye,
Then, suddenly, mysteriously, Green erupts; and we sigh.
Michael P. Garofalo, Cuttings

One flower does not bring spring.
A good year is determined by its spring.
Afghan proverb

Spring - An experience in immortality.
Henry D. Thoreau

Now is the time of the illuminated woods ...
when every leaf glows like a tiny lamp.
J. Burroughs

I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers:
Of April, May, or June, and July flowers.
I sing of Maypoles, Hock-carts, wassails, wakes,
Of bridegrooms, brides, and of the bridal cakes.
Robert Herrick, Hesperides, 1648

God's Warrior

If I had my life to live over, I would start barefoot earlier
in the spring and stay that way later in the fall.
Nadine Stair

Earth, my dearest, I will. Oh believe me, you no longer
need your springtimes to win me over - one of them,
ah, even one, is already too much for my blood.
Unspeakably, I have belonged to you, from the first.
Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies, 9th, 1923

Every spring is the only spring - a perpetual astonishment.
Ellis Peters

Spring is sooner recognized by plants than by men.
Chinese Proverb

Spring has come,
Loudly sing cuckoo!
Groweth seed and blooms mead
And springs the wood now.
Sing cuckoo !
English Poetry from the Middle Ages

That God once loved a garden we learn in Holy writ.
And seeing gardens in the Spring I well can credit it.
Winifred Mary Letts

God's Warrior

One attraction in coming to the woods to live was that I should have leisure and opportunity to see the spring come in. Henry David Thoreau

The thorn tree just began to bud
And greening stained the sheltering hedge,
An many a violet beside the wood
Peeped blue between the withered sedge;
The sun gleamed warm the bank beside,
'Twas pleasant wandering out a while
Neath nestling bush to lonely hide,
Or bend a musings o'er a stile.
John Clare, 1840

The spring is fresh and fearless
And every leaf is new,
The world is brimmed with moonlight,
The lilac brimmed with dew.

Here in the moving shadows
I catch my breath and sing --
My heart is fresh and fearless
And over-brimmed with spring.
Sara Teasdale, May Night, 1920

God's Warrior

Spring makes everything look filthy.
Katherine Whitehorn

Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices
instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable
shrieking into the heart of the night.
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke

The sun is on fire
In the sky
And in its warmth
Flowers open
In the garden
And the butterfly
Flutters by.
Stanley Cook

God's Warrior

There is nothing like the first hot days of spring when the gardener stops wondering if it's too soon to plant the dahlias and starts wondering if it's too late. Even the most beautiful weather will not allay the gardener's notion (well-founded actually) that he is somehow too late, too soon, or that he
has too much stuff going on or not enough. For the garden is the stage on which the gardener exults and agonizes out every crest and chasm of the heart.
Henry Mitchell, 1923 - 1993, The Essential Earthman

This outward spring and garden are a reflection of the inward garden. Rumi

And what is so rare as a day in June?
Then, if ever, come perfect days;
Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune,
And over it softly her warm ear lays.
James Russell Lowell

Now every field is clothed with grass, and every tree with leaves;
now the woods put forth their blossoms, and the year assumes its gay attire.
Virgil

For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth, the time of singing has come and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.
The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom;
they give forth fragrance. Arise my love, my fair one,
and come away. Bible - The Song of Solomon, 2:11-13

God's Warrior

Every year back spring comes, with nasty little birds,
yapping their fool heads off and the ground all mucked up with plants. Dorothy Parker

But each spring a gardening instinct, sure as the sap rising in the trees, stirs within us. We look about and decide to tame another little bit of ground.
Lewis Gantt

One swallow does not make a summer, but one skein of geese, cleaving the murk of March thaw, is the Spring.
Aldo Leopold

There ought to be Gardens for all Months in the year, in which, severally, things of Beauty may be then in season.
Sir Francis Bacon

God's Warrior

Walking around an early spring garden going nowhere.
Kyoshi

Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses, a box where sweets compacted lie. George Herbert

God's Warrior

SPRING
Anacreon (c.572-488 BC)

See the Spring herself discloses,
And the Graces gather roses;
See how the becalmed seas
Now their swelling waves appease;
How the duck swims, how the crane
Comes from winter home again;
See how Titan's cheerful ray
Chaseth the dark clouds away;
Now in their new robes of green
Are the plowman's labors seen:
Now the lusty teeming Earth
Springs each hour with a new birth;
Now the olive blooms: the vine
Now doth with plump pendants shine;
And with leaves and blossoms now
Freshly bourgeons every bough.

TRANSLATED BY THOMAS STANLEY, 1651

God's Warrior

THE PRAISE OF SPRING
Gonzalo de Berceo (1180-1246)

I, Gonzalo de Berceo, in the gentle summertide,
Wending upon a pilgrimage, came to a meadow's side;
All green was it and beautiful, with flowers far and wide,--
A pleasant spot, I ween, wherein the traveller might abide.

Flowers with the sweetest odors filled all the sunny air,
And not alone refreshed the sense, but stole the mind from every care;
On every side a fountain gushed, whose waters pure and fair,
Ice-cold beneath the summer sun, but warm in winter were.

There on the thick and shadowy trees, amid the foliage green,
Were the fig and the pomegranate, the pear and apple seen;
And other fruits of various kinds, the tufted leaves between,
None were unpleasant to the taste and none decayed, I ween.

The verdure of the meadow green, the odor of the flowers
The grateful shadows of the trees, tempered with fragrant showers,
Refreshed me in the burning heat of the sultry noontide hours;
Oh, one might live upon the balm and fragrance of those bowers!

Ne'er had I found on earth a spot that had such power to please,
Such shadows from the summer sun, such odors on the breeze;
I threw my mantle on the ground, that I might rest at ease,
And stretched upon the greensward lay in the shadow of the trees.

There soft reclining in the shade, all cares beside me flung,
I heard the soft and mellow notes that through the woodland rung;
Ear never listened to a strain, for instrument or tongue,
So mellow and harmonious as the songs above me sung.

Translated by H. W. Longfellow