Sore in doubt concerning spring....

Aaaah, spring, where are you? Tomorrow, March 20th,  Spring begins the vernal equinox at 12:57 in the afternoon ... and my garden is still filled with 8 foot high snow banks. The streets are hidden under many layers of pressed snow; dark brown, dirty white, dull mud gray, pebbled, and crackling with rot - like we see the earth in archaeological digs. Spring? Is this spring?  Can't be!

I was reading Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market and Other Poems" again last night and came upon the same poem I wrote about last year. 

The impatient hope for changes in weather often leads me back to Rossetti. 

Portrait of Christina Rossetti 1830-1894 by Dante Charles Gabriel Rossetti  

 "The First Spring Day"

"I wonder if the sap is stirring yet,

If wintery birds are dreaming of a mate,

If frozen snow drops feel as yet the sun

And crocus fires are kindling one by one:

Sing, robin, sing;
I am sore in doubt concerning spring."

"Spring"

Arthur Herbert Buckland, 1896

"Spring"
Walter Crane 1844-45

------------------------------


I wonder if the springtide of this year

Will bring another Spring both lost and dear;

If heart and spirit will find out their Spring,

Or if the world alone will bud and sing:    

Sing, hope, to me;

Sweet notes, my hope, soft notes for memory.

"The Soul of the Rose" 

John William Waterhouse, 1908

------------------------------

The sap will surely quicken soon or late,

The tardiest bird will twitter to a mate;

So Spring must dawn again with warmth and bloom,

Or in this world, or in the world to come:    

Sing, voice of Spring,

Till I too blossom and rejoice and sing.


 
"Love's Messenger"
Marie Spartelli Stillman 1844-1927 

"Bird's Nest" William Henry Hunt  1855-1860