Spring (season)

Spring is one of the four seasons of temperate zones, the transition from winter into summer.

Quotes

 * Alphabetized by author


 * Ring out the bells again; like we did when spring began.
 * Billie Joe Armstrong, "Wake Me Up When September Ends", American Idiot (2004), California: Reprise Records

To have enjoy'd the sun, To have lived light in the spring, To have loved, to have thought, to have done; To have advanc'd true friends, and beat down baffling foes?
 * Is it so small a thing
 * Matthew Arnold, "Empedocles on Etna" (1852)


 * What does winter or autumn or spring or summer know of memory. They know nothing of memory. They know that seasons pass and return. They know that they are seasons. That they are time. And they know how to affirm themselves. And they know how to impose themselves. And they know how to maintain themselves, What does autumn know of summer. What sorrows do seasons have. None hate. None love. They just pass.
 * Giannina Braschi, "Pastoral or the Inquisition of Memories" from Empire of Dreams (1994)

And day's at the morn; Morning's at seven; The hill-side's dew-pearl'd; The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn; God's in His heaven— All's right with the world!
 * The year's at the spring,
 * Robert Browning, Pippa's Song in Pippa Passes (1841)


 * There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of birds, in the ebb and flow of the tides; in the folded bud ready for the spring. There is something infinitely healing in these repeated refrains of nature-the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.
 * Rachel Carson Speech (1954) In Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson (1998)


 * Over increasingly large areas of the United States, spring now comes unheralded by the return of the birds, and the early mornings are strangely silent where once they were filled with the beauty of bird song.
 * Rachel Carson Silent Spring (1962)


 * The highroad was dry, the lovely April sun was shining warmly, but in the ditches and forest snow still lay on the ground. Harsh, dark, interminable winter was only just receding, and spring was suddenly here, but for Marya Vasilyevna, who sat now in the cart, there was nothing new or engaging in the warmth, or in the languid ethereal woods warming in the breath of spring, or in the black flocks flying off to the fields over giant puddles resembling lakes, or in the strange fathomless sky, into which, it seemed, one could escape with such pleasure.
 * Anton Chekhov, "In the Cart" (1897).

Still the air is chill and raw. Here and there a patch of snow, Dirtier than the ground below, Dribbles down a marshy flood; Ankle-deep you stick in mud In the meadows, — while you sing, "This is Spring."
 * If there comes a little thaw,
 * , "A Spring-Growl" (, March 26, 1873), stanza VI, in The Bird and the Bell, with Other Poems (Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1875), p. 199.


 * What a glorious time of the year is this! With the warm sun travelling through serene skies, the air clear and fresh above you, which instils new blood in the body, making one defiantly tramp the earth, kicking the snows aside in the scorn of action.
 * William Henry Davies, The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp (1908), Ch. XIX.


 * Listen, can you hear it? Spring's sweet cantata. The strains of grass pushing through the snow. The song of buds swelling on the vine. The tender timpani of a baby robin's heart. Spring.
 * Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider, Northern Exposure, "Wake Up Call" (1992)


 * And we will know, we will pursue to know Jehovah. Like dawn, his going forth is firmly established. And he will come in like a pouring rain to us; like a spring rain that saturates [the] earth.
 * Hosea 6:3, NWT

When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush'''; Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring The ear, it strikes like lightning to hear him sing.
 * '''Nothing is so beautiful as Spring—
 * Gerard Manley Hopkins, "Spring"


 * You sons of Zion, be joyful and rejoice in Jehovah your God; for he will give you the autumn rain in the right amount, and he will send upon you a downpour, the autumn rain and the spring rain, as before. The threshing floors will be full of pure grain, and the presses will overflow with new wine and oil. And I will make compensation to you for the years that the swarming locust, the unwinged locust, the voracious locust, and the devouring locust have eaten, my great army that I sent among you.
 * Joel 2:23-25, NWT


 * Snow-dropped, crocused, and violeted Spring, in the country, was beginning to consider about making her will, and leaving her legacies of full-blown flowers and green fruit to Summer
 * Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Romance and Reality (1831), Volume 1, Chapter 3.


 * ...the sun had come back over the Forest, bringing with it the scent of May, and all the streams of the Forest were tinkling happily to find themselves their own pretty shape again, and the little pools lay dreaming of the life they had seen and the big things they had done, and in the warmth and quiet of the Forest the cuckoo was trying over his voice carefully and listening to see if he liked it, and wood-pigeons were complaining gently to themselves in their lazy comfortable way that it was the other fellow's fault, but it didn't matter very much...
 * A. A. Milne, in Winnie-the-Pooh (1926)


 * Spring, the sweet Spring, is the year's pleasant king
 * Thomas Nashe, Summer's Last Will and Testament (1600), lines 161–164

But beauty faded has no second spring.
 * The flowers anew returning seasons bring,
 * Ambrose Philips, Pastoral


 * O, how this spring of love resembleth The uncertain glory of an April day!
 * William Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act 1 scene 3


 * O Spring, of hope and love and youth and gladness Wind-wingèd emblem! brightest, best and fairest! Whence comest thou, when, with dark Winter's sadness The tears that fade in sunny smiles thou sharest? Sister of joy! thou art the child who wearest Thy mother's dying smile, tender and sweet; Thy mother Autumn, for whose grave thou bearest Fresh flowers, and beams like flowers, with gentle feet, Disturbing not the leaves which are her winding sheet.
 * Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Revolt of Islam (1817), Canto Ninth, XXII.


 * If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
 * Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ode to the West Wind.


 * Spring was late. Hardly a peewit, not a lark to hear. A drab disconsolate world.
 * Nan Shepherd,

O sweet new year, delaying long; Thou doest expectant nature wrong, Delaying long; delay no more.
 * Dip down upon the northern shore,
 * Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam A.H.H. (1849), 82.

In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.
 * In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the burnish'd dove;
 * Alfred Tennyson, Locksley Hall (1835, published 1842), Stanza 9.


 * The boyhood of the year.
 * Alfred Tennyson, Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere, Stanza 3.

And, softly shaking on the dimpled pool, Prelusive drops, let all their moisture flow In large effusion, o'er the freshen'd world.
 * Come, gentle Spring; ethereal Mildness, come!
 * James Thomson, The Seasons, Spring (1728), line 1.
 * The Clouds consign their treasures to the fields,
 * James Thomson, The Seasons, Spring (1728), line 173.

Throws out the snowdrop and the crocus first.
 * Fair-handed Spring unbosoms every grace:
 * James Thomson, The Seasons, Spring (1728), line 527.


 * All the efforts of several hundred thousand people, crowded in a small space, to disfigure the land on which they lived; all the stone they covered it with to keep it barren; how so diligently every sprouting blade of grass was removed; all the smoke of coal and naphtha; all the cutting down of trees and driving off of cattle could not shut out the spring, even from the city. The sun was shedding its light; the grass, revivified, was blooming forth, where it was left uncut, not only on the greenswards of the boulevard, but between the flag-stones, and the birches, poplars and wild-berry trees were unfolding their viscous leaves; the limes were unfolding their buds; the daws, sparrows and pigeons were joyfully making their customary nests, and the flies were buzzing on the sun-warmed walls. Plants, birds, insects and children were equally joyful. Only men—grown-up men—continued cheating and tormenting themselves and each other. People saw nothing holy in this spring morning, in this beauty of God's world—a gift to all living creatures—inclining to peace, good-will and love, but worshiped their own inventions for imposing their will on each other.
 * Leo Tolstoy, Resurrection (1899), translated by William E. Smith, Chapter 1.


 * Nunc omnis ager, nunc omnis parturit arbor; Nunc frondent sylvae, nunc formosissimus annus.
 * The trees are cloth'd with leaves, the fields with grass; The blossoms blow; the birds on bushes sing; And Nature has accomplish'd all the spring.
 * Virgil, Eclogues (37 BC), Book III, lines 56-57 (trans. John Dryden).

The periwinkle trailed its wreaths; And ’tis my faith that every flower Enjoys the air it breathes.
 * Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,
 * William Wordsworth, Lines Written in Early Spring, lines 9–12, in Francis Turner Palgrave, The Golden Treasury of English Songs and Lyrics, Book IV [1861] (1875), and in Lynne McMahon and Averill Curdy, The Longman Anthology of Poetry (Pearson, 2006)

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

 * Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 746–748.


 * As quickly as the ice vanishes when the Father unlooses the frost fetters and unwounds the icy ropes of the torrent.
 * Beowulf, VII.

The vernal joy my better years have known; Dim in my breast life's dying taper burns, And all the joys of life with health have flown.
 * Now Spring returns; but not to me returns
 * Michael Bruce, Elegy, written in Spring.

On every blooming tree, And spreads her sheets o' daisies white Out o'er the grassy lea.
 * Now Nature hangs her mantle green
 * Robert Burns, Lament of Mary Queen of Scots.


 * And the spring comes slowly up this way.
 * Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Christabel (c. 1797–1801, published 1816), Part I.

Rock'd in the cradle of the western breeze.
 * Spring hangs her infant blossoms on the trees,
 * William Cowper, Tirocinium, line 43.

Ring, blue-bells, ring! Winning eye and heart completely, Sing, robin, sing! All among the reeds and rushes, Where the brook its music hushes, Bright the caloposon blushes.— Laugh, O murmuring Spring!
 * Starred forget-me-nots smile sweetly,
 * Sarah F. Davis, Summer Song.

With sudden passion languishing, Teaching barren moors to smile, Painting pictures mile on mile, Holds a cup of cowslip wreaths Whence a smokeless incense breathes.
 * Daughter of heaven and earth, coy Spring,
 * Ralph Waldo Emerson, May Day, Stanza 1.

Warms the mild Air, and crowns the youthful Year. The Rose still blushes, and the vi'lets blow.
 * Eternal Spring, with smiling Verdure here
 * Sir Samuel Garth, The Dispensary (1699), Canto IV, line 298.

Fair Venus' train appear, Disclose the long-expecting flowers, And wake the purple year.
 * Lo! where the rosy bosom'd Hours
 * Thomas Gray, Ode on Spring. Compare Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite. (Hymn E.).


 * When Spring unlocks the flowers to paint the laughing soil.
 * Reginald Heber, Hymn for Seventh Sunday after Trinity.

With looks my care beguiling; The country round appeareth straight A flower-garden smiling.
 * The spring's already at the gate
 * Heinrich Heine, Book of Songs, Catherine, No. 6.

With comfort are downward gazing.
 * The beauteous eyes of the spring's fair night
 * Heinrich Heine, Book of Songs, New Spring, No. 3.

I come o'er the mountain with light and song: Ye may trace my step o'er the wakening earth, By the winds which tell of the violet's birth, By the primrose-stars in the shadowy grass, By the green leaves, opening as I pass.
 * I come, I come! ye have called me long,
 * Felicia Hemans, Voice of Spring.

A box where sweets compacted lie, My musick shows ye have your closes, And all must die.
 * Sweet Spring, full of sweet dayes and roses,
 * George Herbert, The Church, Vertue, Stanza 3.

Of all men's souls to-day A secret quiver shoots.
 * For surely in the blind deep-buried roots
 * Richard Hovet, Spring.

Till something from the Spring be missed We have not truly known the Spring.
 * They know who keep a broken tryst,
 * Robert Underwood Johnson, The Wistful Days.

The crocus cannot often kiss her; The snow-drop, ere she comes, has flown:— The earliest violets always miss her.
 * All flowers of Spring are not May's own;
 * Lucy Larcom, The Sister Months.

O'er mountain, dale, and dell; And where her golden light was seen An emerald shadow fell. The good-wife oped the window wide, The good-man spanned his plough; 'Tis time to run, 'tis time to ride, For Spring is with us now.
 * And softly came the fair young queen
 * Charles Godfrey Leland, Spring.

And the great elms o'erhead Dark shadows wove on their aerial looms, Shot through with golden thread.
 * The lovely town was white with apple-blooms,
 * Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Hawthorne, Stanza 2.

All its birds and all its blossoms, All its flowers, and leaves, and grasses.
 * Came the Spring with all its splendor,
 * Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Song of Hiawatha (1855), Part XXI, line 109.

Flooding the earth with flowers, and the air with melodies vernal.
 * Thus came the lovely spring with a rush of blossoms and music,
 * Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863–1874), Part III. The Theologian's Tale. Elizabeth.

Is working silently.
 * The holy spirit of the Spring
 * George MacDonald, Songs of the Spring Days, Part II.

Calls us; we lose the prime, to mark how spring Our tended plants, how blows the citron grove, What drops the myrrh, and what the balmy reed, How nature paints her colours, how the bee Sits on the bloom, extracting liquid sweet.
 * Awake! the morning shines, and the fresh field
 * John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book V, line 20.

Little birdlets singing Warble sweet notes in the air. Flowers fair There I found. Green spread the meadow all around.
 * On many a green branch swinging,
 * Neidhart von Reuental, Spring-Song. Translation in The Minnesinger of Germany.

That Youth's sweet-scented manuscript should close! The Nightingale that in the branches sang Ah whence and whither flown again, who knows?
 * Yet Ah, that Spring should vanish with the Rose,
 * Omar Khayyam, Rubaiyat, FitzGerald's Translation St. 96.

Well dost thou thy power display! For Winter maketh the light heart sad, And thou,—thou makest the sad heart gay.
 * Gentle Spring!—in sunshine clad,
 * Charles d'Orléans, Spring. Longfellow's translation.

Bidding Spring arise, To listen to the rain-drops falling From the cloudy skies, To listen to Earth's weary voices, Louder every day, Bidding her no longer linger On her charm'd way; But hasten to her task of beauty Scarcely yet begun.
 * Hark! the hours are softly calling
 * Adelaide Anne Procter, Spring.

If wintry birds are dreaming of a mate, If frozen snowdrops feel as yet the sun, And crocus fires are kindling one by one.
 * I wonder if the sap is stirring yet,
 * Christina G. Rossetti, The First Spring Day, Stanza 1.

When life's alive in everything, Before new nestlings sing, Before cleft swallows speed their journey back Along the trackless track.
 * There is no time like Spring,
 * Christina G. Rossetti, Spring, Stanza 3.

And flowers, in fading, leave us but their seeds.
 * Spring flies, and with it all the train it leads:
 * Friedrich Schiller, Farewell to the Reader.

The tiny kindling flame of emerald fire, The stir amid the roots of reeds, and how The sap will flush the briar.
 * I sing the first green leaf upon the bough,
 * Clinton Scollard, Song in March.


 * For, lo! the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.
 * The Song of Solomon, II. 11, 12.

First, lusty Spring, all dight in leaves of flowres That freshly budded and new bloomes did beare, In which a thousand birds had built their bowres That sweetly sung to call forth paramours; And in his hand a javelin he did beare, And on his head (as fit for warlike stoures) A guilt, engraven morion he did weare: That, as some did him love, so others did him feare.
 * So forth issew'd the Seasons of the yeare:
 * Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book VII, Canto VII. Legend of Constancie, Stanza 28.

Rustic odor, smiling hue, And the clean air shines and twinkles as the world goes wheeling through; And my heart springs up anew, Bright and confident and true, And my old love comes to meet me in the dawning and the dew.
 * Now the hedged meads renew
 * Robert Louis Stevenson, poem written in 1876.

About the country high and low, Among the lilacs hand in hand, And two by two in fairyland.
 * It is the season now to go
 * Robert Louis Stevenson, Underwoods, It is the Season Now to Go.

Sweet foot of Spring that with her footfall sows Late snow-like flowery leavings of the snows, Be not too long irresolute to be; O mother-month, where have they hidden thee?
 * O tender time that love thinks long to see,
 * Algernon Charles Swinburne, A Vision of Spring in Winter.

Makes all things new, And domes the red-plough'd hills With loving blue; The blackbirds have their wills, The throstles too.
 * Once more the Heavenly Power
 * Alfred Tennyson, Early Spring.

"I am faint for your honey, my sweet." The flower said, "Take it, my dear, For now is the Spring of the year. So come, come!" "Hum!" And the bee buzz'd down from the heat.
 * The bee buzz'd up in the heat,
 * Alfred Tennyson, The Forester, Act IV, scene 1.

Like torrents gush the summer rills; Through winter's moss and dry dead leaves The bladed grass revives and lives, Pushes the mouldering waste away, And glimpses to the April day.
 * 'Tis spring-tune on the eastern hills!
 * John Greenleaf Whittier, Mogg Megone, Part III.

And the rosebud breaks into pink on the climbing briar, And the crocus bed is a quivering moon of fire Girdled round with the belt of an amethyst ring.
 * And all the woods are alive with the murmur and sound of spring,
 * Oscar Wilde, Magdalen Walks.

With its slight fingers full of leaves and flowers, And with it comes a thirst to be away, In lovelier scenes to pass these sweeter hours.
 * The Spring is here—the delicate footed May,
 * Nathaniel Parker Willis, Spring.