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| Two households, both Locked Down in dignity.... |
One of the luckiest privileges of My Life In Lockdown is having a panoramic meadow and woods within walking distance of the house. When Spring 2020 started bursting, as the reality of Lockdown began, it became an endless fascination on the same walk to see how colours, shapes and textures changed as Nature resurrected its glorious self, free for the most part from a significant volume of traffic fumes. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one to notice the ecstatic increase in the sounds of birds. Was that illusory? Could the insane variety and volume of chirruping have always been there? I’ve always delberately walked down (and driven, I admit) roads where I knew blossom trees were exploding in colour; this year my eyes seemed to bathe in blossom more intensely.
Spring reminds me of my Mum (her birthday, her in the garden, her love of flowers – see Nothing is so beautiful as Spring) and every year I think of the ancient Greek proverb A society grows great when old people plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in – a proverb brought to life in 2020 by charity fundraiser, (Captain) Tom Moore. As usual, Chaucer, Shakespeare, the Brontës and Dickens are easy to mine for quotations about Spring but, this year, it feels to me that Charlotte Brontë in Jane Eyre wrote a sentence which is worth clinging onto as Covid-19 continues to spread its fatal droplets:
“Spring drew on…and a greenness grew over those brown beds, which, freshening daily, suggested the thought that Hope traversed them at night, and left each morning brighter traces of her steps.”
I’ll finish this Lockdown Spring riff with a poem I’ve quoted before (here). The “SuperTramp” poet, WH Davies, has had a revival during Lockdown since his words require you to slow down the pace, step away from the rat race, and breathe calmly.
What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
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