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
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
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
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
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
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.
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)
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
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
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
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum
Home
FAQ
Memberlist
Usergroups
Join! (free) 
Profile
Messages
Login/Out
