The tender Spring

Unruly blasts wait on the tender Spring

Unwholesome weeds take root with precious flowers
The adder hisses where the sweet birds sing
What virtue breeds, iniquity devours.

Has Spring finally arrived? In the last week I have felt the sun’s warmth on my face and arms for the first time in 2018. In honour of Shakespeare’s birthday (and death-day) – 23rd April 1564 to 1616 – and St George’s Day, too, that Turkish dragon-slayer…. some Shakespeare words with Spring in the their step. The first quotation above is from The Rape of Lucrece, one of Shakespeare’s less well-known narrative poems and captures the whole ying-yang thing about life – rough with the smooth – good and bad mixed – it’s sometimes wintry just before Spring – “sweet are the uses of adversity” – but you have to hang on to Shelley’s line “If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”

Roaring Wharfe and calm Wharfe at Bolton Abbey

Song from As You Like It
It was a lover and his lass,
With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,
That o'er the green corn-field did pass
In spring time, in spring time, the only pretty ring time,
When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding:
Sweet lovers love the spring.

Between the acres of the rye,
These pretty country folks would lie….

This carol they began that hour,
How that a life was but a flower….

And therefore take the present time,
With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino; 
For love is crowned with the prime
In spring time, in spring time, the only pretty ring time,
When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding:
Sweet lovers love the spring.

Bolton Abbey: sunshine slanting down the banks

Song of Spring from Love’s Labour’s Lost
When daisies pied and violets blue
And lady-smocks all silver-white
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue 
Do paint the meadows with delight,
The cuckoo then, on every tree, 
Mocks married men; for thus sings he,
Cuckoo;
Cuckoo, cuckoo: O word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear!

When shepherds pipe on oaten straws
And merry larks are ploughmen's clocks,
When turtles tread, and rooks, and daws,
And maidens bleach their summer smocks
The cuckoo then, on every tree, 
Mocks married men; for thus sings he,
Cuckoo;
Cuckoo, cuckoo: O word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear!