Sunday, March 16, 2014

Sore in doubt concerning spring....


Aaaah, spring, where are you? Tomorrow, March 20th,  Spring begins the vernal equinox at 12:57 in the afternoon ... and my garden is still filled with 8 foot high snow banks. The streets are hidden under many layers of pressed snow; dark brown, dirty white, dull mud gray, pebbled, and crackling with rot - like we see the earth in archaeological digs. Spring? Is this spring?  Can't be!

I was reading Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market and Other Poems" again last night and came upon the same poem I wrote about last year. 


The impatient hope for changes in weather often leads me back to Rossetti. 



Portrait of Christina Rossetti 1830-1894 by Dante Charles Gabriel Rossetti  


 "The First Spring Day"

"I wonder if the sap is stirring yet,
If wintery birds are dreaming of a mate,
If frozen snow drops feel as yet the sun
And crocus fires are kindling one by one:
Sing, robin, sing;
I am sore in doubt concerning spring."


"Spring"
Arthur Herbert Buckland, 1896



"Spring"
Walter Crane 1844-45


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I wonder if the springtide of this year
Will bring another Spring both lost and dear;
If heart and spirit will find out their Spring,
Or if the world alone will bud and sing:    
Sing, hope, to me;
Sweet notes, my hope, soft notes for memory.


"The Soul of the Rose" 
John William Waterhouse, 1908


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The sap will surely quicken soon or late,
The tardiest bird will twitter to a mate;
So Spring must dawn again with warmth and bloom,
Or in this world, or in the world to come:    
Sing, voice of Spring,
Till I too blossom and rejoice and sing.


 
"Love's Messenger"
Marie Spartelli Stillman 1844-1927 



"Bird's Nest" William Henry Hunt  1855-1860