About ten hours ago, the vernal equinox arrived here in the northern hemisphere.<\/p>\n
In honor of that, here's my traditional quote, my favorite bit of Swinburne:<\/p>\n
\n\nFor winter's rains and ruins are over,<\/p>\n
And all the season of snows and sins;<\/p>\n
The days dividing lover and lover,<\/p>\n
The light that loses, the night that wins;<\/p>\n
And time remember'd is grief forgotten,<\/p>\n
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,<\/p>\n
And in green underwood and cover<\/p>\n
Blossom by blossom the spring begins.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
—Algernon Charles Swinburne, from “Atalanta in Calydon<\/a>” (1865)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
I think I'll also include some other spring-and-early-summer quotes from past years:<\/p>\n
\nThe 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.<\/p>\n
—Mark Helprin, from Winter's Tale<\/cite>, p. 262 of the 1984 Pocket edition<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Here's an older piece of spring verse:<\/p>\n
\n\nThough a country be sundered, hills and rivers endure;<\/p>\n
And spring comes green again to trees and grasses<\/p>\n
Where petals have been shed like tears<\/p>\n
And lonely birds have sung their grief.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n