Spring-time
Springtime: the season for starting anew.
I haven’t posted anything here for quite some time – the winter seemed to hang heavily for a while. I started to write many times but, as words didn’t flow, I concentrated on other things. Now, as we move towards the end of February, everything is beginning to look a little brighter and I feel that it’s time to celebrate our wonderful season of renewal.
Signs of Springtime are the signs of hope for many.
Roughly from March, unless we are heavily asleep, we can once again wake to the most wondrous of all alarm clocks – the dawn chorus. As it is now that migratory birds return and swell the numbers of birds in our gardens, singing their joyful songs as the day begins.
Days are now becoming longer and lighter, and we (occasionally) get better weather, which encourages us to get outside more often. And it is outside that we are more able to see the signs of nature’s awakening.
Who doesn’t feel happy to see newly formed leaf-buds on the trees, fresh green shoots in the gardens, followed by early Spring flowers – snowdrops, primroses, daffodils and a little later on, bluebells. Both wild and cultivated, their appearance adds much needed colour to our the world. Later still, there will be flower blossom in the hedgerows, with bees and butterflies busily spreading the pollen.
Also in the garden, birds can now be seen exploring bird-boxes and marking out where they will make their nests. Whilst out in the fields, already there are this year’s lambs – huddling next to their mothers. It won’t be long before they’re bolder and stronger and can be seen jumping and playing in the verdant grass.
There have been many poems written to celebrate this wonderful season, most of them focus on the lovely yellow daffodil. Including a one verse rhyme that I’m sure many of us remember from our childhoods:
Daffy-down-dilly has come up to town
With a yellow petticoat and a pretty green gown
A poem that most of us are familiar with, comes from the pen of William Wordsworth:
I wandered 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;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay;
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee;
A poet could not but be gay
In such jocund company:
I gazed-and gazed-but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie,
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
Finally from me today, a beautiful poem by Katherine Mansfield, which I think catches the essence of the first days of the season: “Very Early Spring’ (1912).
The fields are snowbound no longer
There are little blue lakes and flags of tenderest green.
The snow has been caught up into the sky
So many white clouds – and the blue of the sky is cold.
Now the sun walks in the forest
He touches the bows and stems with his golden fingers
They shiver, and wake from slumber.
Over the barren branches he shakes his yellow curls ….
Yet is the forest full of the sound of tears ….
A wind dances over the fields,
Shrill and clear the sound of her waking laughter,
Yet the little blue lakes tremble
And the flags of tenderest green bend and quiver.
Comments
Oh yes, Springtime is very welcome indeed!