This morning\u2019s northern-hemisphere vernal equinox was a couple hours ago, so here\u2019s my traditional spring post, even though it\u2019s raining here this week.<\/p>\r\n
\r\n\r\nFor winter's rains and ruins are over,<\/p>\r\n
And all the season of snows and sins;<\/p>\r\n
The days dividing lover and lover,<\/p>\r\n
The light that loses, the night that wins;<\/p>\r\n
And time remember'd is grief forgotten,<\/p>\r\n
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,<\/p>\r\n
And in green underwood and cover<\/p>\r\n
Blossom by blossom the spring begins.<\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n
\u2014Algernon Charles Swinburne, from \u201cAtalanta in Calydon<\/a>\u201d (1865)<\/p>\r\n
\r\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>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n
\u2014Mark Helprin, from Winter's Tale<\/cite>, p. 262 of the 1984 Pocket edition<\/p>\r\n
\r\n\r\nThough a country be sundered, hills and rivers endure;<\/p>\r\n
And spring comes green again to trees and grasses<\/p>\r\n
Where petals have been shed like tears<\/p>\r\n
And lonely birds have sung their grief.<\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n
\u2014Du Fu, from \u201cA Spring View<\/a>\u201d (c. 750), trans. Witter Bynner<\/p>\r\n
Note: The site I used to link to for that last verse is gone, and when I went looking for another source, I found some other translations and some background info, and now I\u2019m more hesitant; I\u2019m not sure that poem is really about what I thought it was about. (Some examples: Translation by unknown-to-me translator<\/a>; Kathleen Graber\u2019s translation<\/a>; Hugh Grigg\u2019s translation<\/a>; Stephen Owen\u2019s translation, plus some historical context<\/a>; Notes on translating this poem<\/a>.) But I\u2019ll leave it in place this year. (Also, I had been writing the poet\u2019s name as Tu Fu, but I see now that the name is transliterated almost everywhere as Du Fu.)<\/p>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[85,74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature","category-time"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17113"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17116,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17113\/revisions\/17116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}