Vibrant Village ™

Vibrant Village Celebrates National Poetry Month

Ah, Spring and poetry!  They seem such a joyous, perfect fit.

This hopeful season of tender green shoots and new bloom has long inspired poets to praise the season with delicious words.

Were you among the school children who were required to memorize a certain poem by A.E. Housman?  Remember how the boys groaned when forced to recite it, but we girls, perhaps more  romantic, didn't seem to mind?  Today, as they have over the years, the lines still come to my mind with the first exultant blooms of April:

Loveliest of Trees

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

Later on, in college, I was introduced to the poetry of ee cummings, that sensually romantic bard who created his own form of punctuation and capitalization, and who wrote of Spring with such playful words:

“in Just-
spring       when the world is mud-
luscious ...and it's
spring...
when the world is puddle-wonderful”

“Mud-luscious,” “puddle-wonderful”-- cummings makes words so much fun.

Emily Dickinson, sequestered away in her room,  knew well about Spring fever.  In fact, Ms. Dickinson even gave us permission to embrace it.  She felt it was fine to be caught in its grip:

A little Madness in the Spring

A little Madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the King,
But God be with the Clown --
Who ponders this tremendous scene --
This whole Experiment of Green --

But some poets take an opposing direction and delve into a darker emotion. One poet, in particular, views Spring differently.  That's okay, for poetry grants us the latitude to express all our emotions.  Still, this poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay unsettles me every time I read her words:

Old Burying Ground, Beaufort, NC

Spring

To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

But let's depart from the cynical (and set aside wondering what sadness could have so engraved her spirit) and return to the lighter side of Spring. For those of us who are unrepentant romantics (and who isn't in tenderest Spring?), Lucy Maud Montgomery paints the allure of Spring so prettily:

Spring Song

Hark, I hear a robin calling!
List, the wind is from the south!
And the orchard-bloom is falling
Sweet as kisses on the mouth.

In the dreamy vale of beeches
Fair and faint is woven mist,
And the river's orient reaches
Are the palest amethyst.

Every limpid brook is singing
Of the lure of April days;
Every piney glen is ringing
With the maddest roundelays.

Come and let us seek together
Springtime lore of daffodils,
Giving to the golden weather
Greeting on the sun-warm hills.

Ours shall be the moonrise stealing
Through the birches ivory-white;
Ours shall be the mystic healing
Of the velvet-footed night.

Ours shall be the gypsy winding
Of the path with violets blue,
Ours at last the wizard finding
Of the land where dreams come true.
As if it were his own!

With the coming of Spring, do you feel the sap rising?  Delmore Schwartz did when he wrote “Lucky earth, let out of school”:

The Spring
(After Rilke)

Spring has returned! Everything has returned!
The earth, just like a schoolgirl, memorizes
Poems, so many poems. ... Look, she has learned
So many famous poems, she has earned so many prizes!

Teacher was strict. We delighted in the white
Of the old man's beard, bright like the snow's:
Now we may ask which names are wrong, or right
For "blue," for "apple," for "ripe." She knows, she knows!

Lucky earth, let out of school, now you must play
Hide-and-seek with all the children every day:
You must hide that we may seek you: we will! We will!

The happiest child will hold you. She knows all the things
You taught her: the word for "hope," and for "believe,"
Are still upon her tongue. She sings and sings and sings.

Finally, let us go, you and I, and walk the new green fields and gardens adorned with those nodding heads of liquid sunshine, the brave daffodils, happy harbingers of Spring.  And who better to lead the way than wonderful William...Wordsworth, that is.  But let's follow him at a distance and respect his solitude, this poet who spurns wolves and dances with daffodils instead:

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed---and gazed---but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

This Spring, dear reader, I wish you many happy dances with your daffodils. The earth warms, awaiting your hands and the sweet promise of newly-planted seeds.

Will you also grow some words about Spring?   Should you be drawn to do so, share your efforts with us. Next month, in May, they just might flower and take root right here.

Patricia Frank loves words and uses them whenever she can.  She's also the editor and publisher of Vibrant Village.