Equinoctial
It turns out that the machines that awoke me this morning did so a mere 15 minutes or so after this year's vernal equinox. Had I only known, I might have gotten up and posted this earlier.
Here's my usual spring-equinox quote:
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 remember'd 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, from "Atalanta in Calydon" (1865)
Here an older piece of spring verse:
Though a country be sundered, hills and rivers endure;
And spring comes green again to trees and grasses
Where petals have been shed like tears
And lonely birds have sung their grief.
--Tu Fu, from "A Spring View" (c. 750), trans. Witter Bynner
And a bit of spring Frost:
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.
--Robert Frost, from "A Prayer in Spring" (1915)
A more recent snippet:
now, the flowers are fresh and plentiful
time to wash windows, strip off winter's forgetfulness,
come to terms and to some kind of truce
--Margaret James, from "March 18" (2007)
The same about.com section where I got the above pieces also includes a very brief 2007 poem by Larissa Shmailo called "Spring Vow," which I won't reproduce here for copyright reasons. [Link updated in 2018.]
. . . Also, as I mentioned last year: for more spring versifying, see my 2002 equinox entry (featuring Horace/Housman and a link to Eliot) and Twig's 2008 equinox entry (featuring Mahler and Roethke).
