As winter retreats north, spring arrives to infuse trees again with leaves and entice flowers from quiescent buds. It awakens in us spiritual renewal and arouses romantic passions. From time immemorial, we have welcomed spring with religious rituals and resurrections of gods. Generations of poets have written about it, celebrating its beauty and power to breathe life into us after the barren months of winter.
Geoffrey Chaucer (1340/45-1400) understood the extraordinary life generating powers of spring. He was the greatest English poet of the late Middle Ages. His Canterbury Tales are serious, humorous, and sometimes bawdy tales told by pilgrims who are traveling from London to the shrine of St. Thomas Becket (1118-1170) at Canterbury Cathedral to seek forgiveness for their sins. Here is an excerpt from the General Prologue of the poem that illustrates Chaucer’s appreciation of the extraordinary life generating powers of spring: Here is a modern rendering of opening lines, followed by the original Middle English:
The Canterbury Tale: General Prologue 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... If you prefer, your English prior to the Great Vowel Shift, here is the original Middle English text: Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote, The droghte of March hath perced to the roote, And bathed every veyne in swich licóur Of which vertú engendred is the flour; Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth Inspired hath in every holt and heeth The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne, And smale foweles maken melodye, That slepen al the nyght with open ye, So priketh hem Natúre in hir corages, Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages...
Spring does not arouse those feelings only. It also can arouse religious or spiritual yearning. Centuries later,in his sonnet Spring, the Catholic priest and poet Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), invokes the beauty of spring to denote the inherent presence of the divine within human beings.
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.
Hopkins’ poem is a Petrarchan sonnet, which means it is organized into two distinct parts, the eight line octave and the six line sestet (as shown by the space between each part). In the octave is the pure description of spring’s beauty, conveyed through imagery that “strikes” both the eyes and ears. Hopkins establishes through the opening superlative the general character of spring: “Nothing is so beautiful as “Spring.” He slides from this general assertion or “effect,” to what specifically “causes” this season’s beauty. Each item is overflowing with sensuous energy. There are “weeds, in wheels,” “Thrush’s eggs [that] look [like] little low heavens.” There is the “thrush” whose song “does so rinse and wring / The ear, it strikes like lightning to hear him sing.” There is the “glassy peartree leaves and blooms” that “brush / The descending blue.” Finally, there are “the racing lambs.”
If the poem were to end here, the reader would have a lovely description to read, but this poem has deeper resonances. With Hopkins, there are always more layers of meaning to uncover. In the sestet, he asks, “What is all this juice and all this joy?” Naturally, his question is rhetorical. After being immersed in the physical delights of “Spring,” Hopkins now reveals the force infusing nature with its life and beauty. The beauty he sees, hears and feels all around him is “A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning,” the paradise in the Garden of Eden Adam and Eve forfeited when they sinned and ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. For Hopkins, that “strain” is a manifestation of God’s presence in the world, in all of nature, animate or inanimate. Hopkins is “straining” too. Seeing and feeling God’s presence around him inspires him with hope of eternal bliss in the afterlife, but even with his faith in Christ’s death and resurrection, Hopkins can never be absolutely confident that he will be “worthy the winning” of that salvation.
Like Gerard Manley Hopkins, Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) felt a presence in spring and from that presence formulated a verbal perspective of tentative gain and definitive “loss.” In her poem, a Light Exists in Spring, Dickinson watches the effect of the early March sunlight on the landscape, then turns inward to consider its effect on human perception.
A Light exists in Spring A Light exists in Spring Not present on the Year At any other period- When March is scarcely here A Color stands abroad On Solitary Fields That Science cannot overtake But Human Nature feels. It waits upon the Lawn, It shows the furthest Tree Upon the furthest Slope you know It almost speaks to you Then as Horizons step Or Noons report away Without the Formula of sound It passes and we stay- A quality of loss Affecting our Content As Trade had suddenly encroached Upon a Sacrament-
In his poem, Hopkins asserts the potential for seeing and hearing manifestations of God’s presence through nature, Dickinson “feels” only an ephemeral presence of Divinity. The “Light” briefly appears in early “Spring,” and spreads “A Color” that “Science cannot overtake.” Science may calculate the changing angles of the earth to account for its particular slant, but only “Human Nature “feels,” though tenuously, the divine presence the “Light” creates through its “Color / On Solitary Fields.”
In the second stanza of Dickinson’s poem, the “Light” seems to illuminate nature beyond what eyes can see: “It waits upon the lawn, / It shows the furthest Tree / Upon the furthest Slope you know.” This “illumination” transcends the limits of science, and for a moment the speaker gazes that light Adam and Eve knew before they ate the fruit and brought the perilous “knowledge” of good and evil to earth. Then, at a moment of sudden intimacy with her, the “Light” “almost speaks to” her.
As she sees this “Light,” does the speaker hear the voice of the Divine? Perhaps briefly. The earth rotates and as always, the “Horizons Step / Or Noons report away / Without the Formula of sound.” As for the “Light,” “It passes and we stay-” leaving her with “A quality of loss / Affecting our Content.” The final two lines bring forth the daily conflict between spiritual “Content” and the mercenary habits of “Trade [that] had suddenly encroached / Upon a Sacrament.”
Through her poem, Dickinson traces a light of spring that moves backward and forward. Backward toward an Edenic paradise where the light of the divine shone timeless and immutable and forward encroached upon by a mercenary world that debases the human spirit.
The excerpt from Chaucer and the two poems that follow suggest different ways spring affects us with its beauty and animating power. Whether it awakens a desire to embark on a pilgrimage to cleanse our imperfections or to see through our clouded perceptions, spring will sadly arrive this year in the midst of yet another war, piling higher needless misery and needless mourning.
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