Spring Poetry

Saffron · Sun Mar 27, 2011 7:09 pm

We have threads for Winter, Summer and Autumn, I thought it only fair that Spring have its own too.

We like March, his shoes are purple,
He is new and high;
Makes he mud for dog and peddler,
Makes he forest dry;
Knows the adder's tongue his coming,
And begets her spot.
Stands the sun so close and mighty
That our minds are hot
. News is he of all the others;
Bold it were to die
With the blue-birds buccaneering
On his British sky.

--Emily Dickinson

froglipz · Tue Apr 26, 2011 12:35 pm

Two from my favorite poet Robert Frost....

Spring Pools

These pools that, though in forests, still reflect
The total sky almost without defect,
And like the flowers beside them, chill and shiver,
Will like the flowers beside them soon be gone,
And yet not out by any brook or river,
But up by roots to bring dark foliage on.
The trees that have it in their pent-up buds
To darken nature and be summer woods --
Let them think twice before they use their powers
To blot out and drink up and sweep away
These flowery waters and these watery flowers
From snow that melted only yesterday.

This one seems to be about mushy slushy March, it is still bleak and cold, the snow and ice are melting, but the green is still only potential, it has not sprung forth. I like that part of the season, as long as it doesn't last too long like it has this spring in the upper middle...

The next one...

A Prayer in Spring

Oh give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;
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,
The which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends He will,
But which it only needs that we fulfil.

Not so much to my taste, but I thought of a few who will enjoy it, I think, if they peek in here...

giselle · Tue Apr 26, 2011 12:57 pm


	froglipz wrote: Two from my favorite poet Robert Frost.... Spring Pools These pools that, though in forests, still reflect The total sky almost without defect, And like the flowers beside them, chill and shiver, Will like the flowers beside them soon be gone, And yet not out by any brook or river, But up by roots to bring dark foliage on. The trees that have it in their pent-up buds To darken nature and be summer woods -- Let them think twice before they use their powers To blot out and drink up and sweep away These flowery waters and these watery flowers From snow that melted only yesterday. This one seems to be about mushy slushy March, it is still bleak and cold, the snow and ice are melting, but the green is still only potential, it has not sprung forth. I like that part of the season, as long as it doesn't last too long like it has this spring in the upper middle...

You have used the word here that I think spring is all about - potential - not just the potential of a season or of re-growth but the potential of human kind and our earth. Frost does a good job of capturing this 'potential' feeling with lines like "The trees that have it in their pent-up buds".

froglipz · Tue Apr 26, 2011 1:07 pm

Exactly! Although the potential of this season has dragged out too long for me here this year. Frost evokes those images rather succinctly and well for me. I well remember playing in those spring pools that were vanished by May. It was always a shock to my childish self, of course, now I know better

giselle · Tue Apr 26, 2011 2:25 pm


	froglipz wrote: Exactly! Although the potential of this season has dragged out too long for me here this year. Frost evokes those images rather succinctly and well for me. I well remember playing in those spring pools that were vanished by May. It was always a shock to my childish self, of course, now I know better

You have a point here about potential ... it has a 'shelf life' in which either something happens to realize the potential or one becomes rather suspicious that the potential is not all its cracked up to be! Perhaps children live more in the moment than adults and are less concerned that things should march along according to a predetermined schedule and so could be more accepting of 'potential' for what it is.

froglipz · Wed Apr 27, 2011 1:46 am

LoL Children hear more about potential than adults, as in "you're not living up to your potential in Math...we expect to see better grades....etc.

We have snowflakes in the forecast.....AGAIN!

giselle · Wed Apr 27, 2011 4:12 pm

"When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay.
Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-coloured
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel."

Frost, in this quote from Birches, touches on a classic of 'in the moment' living, a boy swinging on birch trees, something that could be associated with spring, but then he turns to a different image, the effect of winter ice on the trees. But Frost is really celebrating the boy's ability to seize the moment and the potential of the trees to make his own fun and not be cowed by seasonal conditions. He just sees the potential fun of swinging in the trees and does it without a lot of hand wringing about it being winter, spring, summer or fall.

"But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm,
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows--
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer."

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