Spring
Thursday I wasn't up to posting my usual cheerful vernal-equinox post, and then I had no time Friday and then I forgot about it over the weekend. So I'm a few days late, but figured it was worth posting anyway. Here's my traditional quote, my favorite bit of Swinburne:
For winter's rains and ruins are over,
And all the season of snows and sins;
The days dividing lover and lover,
The light that loses, the night that wins;
And time remember'd is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
And in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom the spring begins.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne, from “Atalanta in Calydon” (1865)
And here's a bit that I just re-encountered from Winter's Tale—the scene is in early summer, but close enough:
The silence of the trees and quiescence of the wind were nature's hope and disbelief that winter had passed, a time when the wild terrain holds its breath before rejoicing, for fear of calling back the bright blue northerns and the snow.
—Mark Helprin, from Winter's Tale, p. 262 of the 1984 Pocket edition
May all of you who are still dealing with winter soon see the surcease of snow and the inception of spring.