Spring

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring –         

   When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;         

   Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush         

Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring         

The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;

   The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush         

   The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush         

With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.         

What is all this juice and all this joy?         

   A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning

In Eden garden. – Have, get, before it cloy,         

   Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,         

Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,         

   Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning. 

(Gerard Manley Hopkins)

* * *

If ever there were a spring day so perfect,

so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze

that it made you want to throw

open all the windows in the house

and unlatch the door to the canary's cage,

indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,

a day when the cool brick paths

and the garden bursting with peonies

seemed so etched in sunlight

that you felt like taking

a hammer to the glass paperweight

on the living room end table,

releasing the inhabitants

from their snow-covered cottage

so they could walk out,

holding hands and squinting

into this larger dome of blue and white,

well, today is just that kind of day.

 (Billy Collins)

* * *

Green-shadowed people sit, or walk in rings,

Their children finger the awakened grass,

Calmly a cloud stands, calmly a bird sings,

And, flashing like a dangled looking-glass,

Sun lights the balls that bounce, the dogs that bark,

The branch-arrested mist of leaf, and me,

Threading my pursed-up way across the park,

An indigestible sterility.

Spring, of all seasons most gratuitous,

Is fold of untaught flower, is race of water,

Is earth's most multiple, excited daughter;

And those she has least use for see her best,

Their paths grown craven and circuitous,

Their visions mountain-clear, their needs immodest.

(Philip Larkin)