A Springtime Reading List
Victorian poetry edition
Poets - and artists, musicians, philosophers, and novelists - have always loved Spring. It’s a symbolically weighty time that is often associated, in art, with renewal, fertility, innocence, rebirth, childhood, and adolescence. In poetry, these themes come across in an array of symbols, some more traditional than others: flowers blossoming, for instance, or clouds wandering; and on the darker side, perhaps, the cruelness and violence of April, or the shock of light returning after the deep dark winter.
Victorian poetry is often overlooked, perhaps because it’s encased chronologically on either side by hugely influential and academically viable periods for poetry: The Romantic period in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and the modernist period in the early 20th century.
But although we might tend to associate the Victorians with their novelistic masterpieces, they had some beautiful poetry worth looking at too - especially when it comes to the natural world and the environment.
Here’s five poems from the Victorian period that capture the spirit of Springtime, in all its complexity and beauty and strangeness:
1. “Spring’s Bedfellow” by William Morris(1891)
Spring went about the woods to-day,
The soft-foot winter-thief,
And found where idle sorrow lay
‘Twixt flower and faded leaf.
She looked on him, and found him fair
For all she had been told;
She knelt adown beside him there,
And sang of days of old.His open eyes beheld her nought,
Yet ‘gan his lips to move;
But life and deeds were in her thought,
And he would sing of love.So sang they till their eyes did meet,
And faded fear and shame;
More bold he grew, and she more sweet,
Until they sang the same.Until, say they who know the thing,
Their very lips did kiss,
And Sorrow laid abed with Spring
Begat an earthly bliss.
2. “The Orchard” by William Morris (1891)
Midst bitten mead and acre shorn,
The world without is waste and worn,But here within our orchard-close,
The guerdon of its labour shows.O valiant Earth, O happy year
That mocks the threat of winter near,And hangs aloft from tree to tree
The banners of the Spring to be.
3. “Give Place” by Adelaide Anne Procter (1866)
Starry Crowns of Heaven
Set in azure night!
Linger yet a little
Ere you hide your light:-
—Nay; let Starlight fade away
Heralding the day!Snowflakes pure and spotless,
Still, oh, still remain,
Binding dreary winter,
In your silver chain:-
—Nay; but melt at once and bring
Radiant sunny Spring!Blossoms, gentle blossoms,
Do not wither yet;
Still for you the sun shines,
Still the dews are wet:—
—Nay; but fade and wither last,
Fruit must come at last!Joy, so true and tender,
Dare you not abide?
Will you spread your pinions,
Must you leave our side?
—Nay; an Angel’s shining grace
Waits to fill your place!
4. “Shadow and Substance” by Robert Williams Buchanan (1867)
The sun is bright in the meadow,
The Spring flowers blow, Nell stands by the stream, and her shadow
Glimmers below ; And I try to muster the daring
To creep more near, And whisper the passion past bearing
Into her ear.
Her eyelids droop while she fishes.
Her eyes look down ! — But while I whispered my wishes.
If Nell should frown, I think I should turn to self-slaughter
As something sweet. And, embracing her shade in the water,
Die at her feet !
5. “Spring” by G.M. Hopkins (circa 1877)
Nothing is so beautiful as Spring —
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 lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden. — Have, get, before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, lord and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.
Thank you for reading along through the Victorians’ poetic representations of Springtime. I hope you found them as beautiful and thought-provoking as I do!
Loved the one from G.M. Hopkins! Spring certainly is an inspiring time of the year x