Spring poems

To celebrate spring, we’re letting the interns pick some poems to celebrate the season. Today’s selection comes to you from Lydia Kuerth.

“Peace” by Gerard Manley Hopkins

When will you ever, Peace, wild wooddove, shy wings shut,
Your round me roaming end, and under be my boughs?
When, when, Peace, will you, Peace? I'll not play hypocrite
To own my heart: I yield you do come sometimes; but
That piecemeal peace is poor peace. What pure peace allows
Alarms of wars, the daunting wars, the death of it?

O surely, reaving Peace, my Lord should leave in lieu
Some good! And so he does leave Patience exquisite,
That plumes to Peace thereafter. And when Peace here does house
He comes with work to do, he does not come to coo,
He comes to brood and sit.

This poem beautifully depicts the human struggle to secure peace, so often undermined by fits of fear and frustration. Hopkins draws out the elusive nature of the dove, the ancient symbol of peace, as an evasive visitor fluttering from place to place, scattering at the slightest disturbance. His final stanza recognizes that Peace is not a sentimental feeling that comes “to coo,” but “comes to brood and sit”—for it has work to do within the heart.

“The Woodlark” by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Teevo cheevo cheevio chee:

O where, what can tháat be?

Weedio—weedio: there again!

So tiny a trickle of sóng—strain;

And all round not to be found

For brier, bough, furrow, or gréen ground

Before or behind or far or at hand

Either left either right

Anywhere in the súnlight.

Well, after all! Ah but hark—

‘I am the little wóodlark.

. . . . . . . .

To—day the sky is two and two

With white strokes and strains of the blue

. . . . . . . .

Round a ring, around a ring

And while I sail (must listen) I sing

. . . . . . . .

The skylark is my cousin and he

Is known to men more than me

. . . . . . . .

…when the cry within

Says Go on then I go on

Till the longing is less and the good gone

But down drop, if it says Stop,

To the all—a—leaf of the tréetop

And after that off the bough

. . . . . . . .

I ám so véry, O soó very glad

That I dó thínk there is not to be had…

. . . . . . . .

The blue wheat—acre is underneath

And the braided ear breaks out of the sheath,

The ear in milk, lush the sash,

And crush—silk poppies aflash,

The blood—gush blade—gash

Flame—rash rudred

Bud shelling or broad—shed

Tatter—tassel—tangled and dingle—a—dangled

Dandy—hung dainty head.

. . . . . . . .

And down … the furrow dry

Sunspurge and oxeye

And laced—leaved lovely

Foam—tuft fumitory

. . . . . . . .

Through the velvety wind V—winged

To the nest’s nook I balance and buoy

With a sweet joy of a sweet joy,

Sweet, of a sweet, of a sweet joy

Of a sweet—a sweet—sweet—joy.’

This poem plays charmingly with sound and the shapes of words, warbling with jubilant imitations of birdsong and brimming with unabashedly gleeful delight in the abundance of nature. Lively spring flowers bloom through the voice of a lark, so ecstatic that its chirping trips the human tongue. Hopkins masterfully captures the rhythm, spirit, and eloquence of the woodlark, stirring the poet to sing; his poem concludes repeating exultation in “sweet joy,” and readers can almost hear the celebration twittering from a bird’s beak.

“Imagination” by John Davidson

There is a dish to hold the sea,
A brazier to contain the sun,
A compass for the galaxy,
A voice to wake the dead and done!

That minister of ministers,
Imagination, gathers up
The undiscovered Universe,
Like jewels in a jasper cup.

Its flame can mingle north and south;
Its accent with the thunder strive;
The ruddy sentence of its mouth
Can make the ancient dead alive.

The mart of power, the fount of will,
The form and mould of every star,
The source and bound of good and ill,
The key of all the things that are,

Imagination, new and strange
In every age, can turn the year;
Can shift the poles and lightly change
The mood of men, the world's career.

Davidson’s thundering poem exults the power of imagination, opening themes of creation and new beginnings suited to spring. His bold rhymes draw on celestial imagery, portraying imagination as “A compass for the galaxy” and “The form and mould of every star,” praising its ability to contain and shape the vast magnificence of the universe in the human mind, to raise the dead and guide the living, and to transform the moral and scientific realms of humanity.

“Nothing Gold Can Stay” by Robert Frost

Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf’s a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

This short, somber poem poignantly captures the transience of life’s finest moments, from the golden buds of spring to the pinnacles of human happiness. Nature’s gold dulls to green that only flashes briefly again when the leaves die in autumn. Likewise, humanity’s primordial golden age decayed when “Eden sank to grief,” and so Frost recognizes that clinging to this mortal gold—attempting to preserve the perfect gleams in life—is a futile errand bound to dim in disappointment.

“A Prayer in Spring” by Robert 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.

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 fulfill.

This simple spring prayer extends a blessing over the year, asking for people to take pleasure in the present beauties of the spring—from the unfurling flowers to the birds and bees—instead of overlooking these humble blessings through worry over the future, or attempts to control the outcomes of the future year. Spring is not a time to fret about the harvest, but to rejoice in the small promises of new life.