Spring Poems

 Geoffery Chaucer, in his opening lines of The Canterbury Tales, suggests that each April brings a promise of rebirth and renewal. Relieved and grateful that the life-engendering power of spring has returned after the dark, cold winter days, his pilgrims happily set off on a journey to offer prayers of thanks to the saint of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, for protecting their health through the bleak period of winter.

When April with its sweet-smelling showers
Has pierced the drought of March to the root,
And bathed every vein (of the plants) in such liquid
By which power the flower is created;
When the West Wind also with its sweet breath,
In every wood and field has breathed life into
The tender new leaves, and the young sun
Has run half its course in Aries,
And small fowls make melody,
Those that sleep all the night with open eyes
So Nature incites them in their hearts,
Then folk long to go on pilgrimages...
Harvard's Chaucer Website

Poems celebrating the return of spring after the desolation of winter is a well-worn tradition in poetry. But spring has not always elicited relief or joy in poets. Later poets have explored how spring arouses regret, dismay, sorrow or even despondency. Wordsworth’s spring poem, “Lines Written in Early Spring,” (1798) commences with a musical serenity but quickly descends into a mournful mood.

         Lines Written in Early Spring

I heard a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sate reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran;
And much it grieved my heart to think
What man had man made of man.

Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,
the periwinkle trailed its wreaths;
And 'tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.

The birds around me hopped and played,
Their thoughts I cannot measure--
But the least motion which they made
It seemed a thrill of pleasure.

The budding twigs spread out their fan,
To catch the breezy air;
And I must think, do all I can,
That there was pleasure there.

If this belief from heaven be sent,
If such be Nature's holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?

Reclining in a grove, the speaker hears "a thousand blended notes”—nature’s music and feels a “sweet mood” come over him. Nevertheless, that “sweet mood” is one in which “pleasure thoughts / Bring sad thoughts to the mind.” Why do “pleasant thoughts” make him think of “sad thoughts”? In stanza 2, Wordsworth implies what had made him sad. He believed that human beings and nature are essentially interconnected: “To her fair works did Nature link / The human soul that through me ran.” Moreover, he was convinced that sharing in the “fair works” of nature should induce human beings to appreciate not only the sublime beauty of the physical world but also elevate their minds and spirits, making them kind, gentle, charitable, and noble. Instead, the world around him had been undergoing turbulent economic changes. The Industrial Revolution had given birth to sprawling manufacturing towns that forced swaths of the population from small villages to work in “dark satanic mills” as characterized by the fellow poet Willaim Blake. In addition, the enclosure of open-field farms by privately owned large agricultural interests displaced hundreds from small farms and drove many into poverty. Wordsworth saw cruelty and greed of these economic policies as directly contradicting the true relationship humans were supposed to have with nature. Nature inspires Wordsworth with joy, but the behavior of men blighted the potential joy of spring: “And much it grieved my heart to think / What man has made of man.”

Through the next three stanzas of the poem, Wordsworth continues to embrace nature but the feeling in stanza 1 haunts him. In stanza 3, he states ‘‘tis my faith that flowers enjoy flower / Enjoys the air it breathes.” But in stanza (4), that “faith” or certainty recedes slightly as he admits that he cannot know what the birds think, but he wants (“seemed”) to believe their movement denotes “a thrill of pleasure.” In stanza 5, he watches the leaves emerge from their winter sleep and “catch the breezy air.” The “pleasure” he should experience spontaneously from this seasonal gift of nature has to be compelled by his mind into thoughts: “think, do all I can, / That there was pleasure there.” The exertion here is as much emotional as it is intellectual. As the poem concludes, Wordsworth constructs a logical proposition in the form of a question. If the beauty and glory of nature is a gift or “holy plan,” what else can he do but “lament / What man has made of man?”

Perhaps the most despondent utterance about the arrival of spring comes from T. S. Eliot’s famous opening lines of The Waste Land. (1922)

April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

It should be clear that these lines echo Chaucer’s from The Canterbury Tales. When first encountering the poem, many readers are bewildered by them. However, considering them after reading Wordsworth’s “What man has made of man,” their meaning and power can be more easily grasped. Eliot wrote his poem in the aftermath of the enormous death and destruction of the First World War. The shock of the war filled Eliot with a genuine dread, and a fear that life had become morally and spiritually sterile. For him, humans were trapped in a nightmare of existential alienation. How could spring with its “promise” of resurrection be sustained for Eliot in this modern world that “man had made”? Eliot meanders among the consciousness of the dead souls in his poem, through that waste land, and if you read his poem, you will be surprised what he, and ultimately you, discover.