Spring

Quotations for Gardeners, Walkers, and Lovers of the Green Way
Poems, Folklore, Myths, Customs, Holidays, Traditions, Lore, Quotes, Sayings
Celebrations, Gardening Chores, Poetry, Quips, Links, Reading, Weather 

Compiled by Karen and Mike Garofalo
Green Way Research,  Red Bluff, California

Spring     March     April     May     June     Summer     Months    

Walking     Flowers     Trees     Blog     Gardening     Home

Springtime

April, May, June
Poetry, Quotations, Sayings, Facts, Wisdom, Quips, Aphorisms, Lore

"The wood is decked in light green leaf.
The swallow twitters in delight.
The lonely vine sheds joyous tears
Of interwoven dew and light.

Spring weaves a gown of green to clad
The mountain height and wide-spread field.
O when wilt thou, my native land,
In all thy glory stand revealed?"
-  Ilia Chavchavadze, Spring

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"Come, gentle Spring!  Ethereal Mildness!  Come."
-  James Thomson 

"When April scatters charms of primrose gold
Among the copper leaves in thickets old,
And singing skylarks from the meadows rise,
To twinkle like black stars in sunny skies;

When I can hear the small woodpecker ring
Time on a tree for all the birds that sing;
And hear the pleasant cuckoo, loud and long --
The simple bird that thinks two notes a song."
-  William Henry Davies, April's Charms 

"Spring comes: the flowers learn their colored shapes."
-  Maria Konopnicka 

Note:  This webpage is now updated and maintained at a new location. 

"How many million Aprils came
before I ever knew
how white a cherry bough could be,
a bed of squills, how blue
And many a dancing April
when life is done with me,
will lift the blue flame of the flower
and the white flame of the tree
Oh burn me with your beauty then,
oh hurt me tree and flower,
lest in the end death try to take
even this glistening hour..."
-  Sara Teasdale, Blue Squills, 1920 

"In April, we cannot see sunflowers in France, so we might say the sunflowers do not exist. But the local farmers have already planted thousands of seeds, and when they look at the bare hills, they may be able to see the sunflowers already. The sunflowers are there. They lack only the conditions of sun, heat, rain and July. Just because we cannot see them does not mean that they do not exist."
-  Thich Nhat Hanh 

"What is one to say about June, the time of perfect young summer, the fulfillment of the promise of the earlier months, and with as yet no sign to remind one that its fresh young beauty will ever fade."
-  Gertrude Jekyll, On Gardening 

"Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring
The Winter Garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To fly--and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing."
-  Omar Khayyám  

"Hark, I hear a robin calling!
List, the wind is from the south!
And the orchard-bloom is falling
Sweet as kisses on the mouth.

In the dreamy vale of beeches
Fair and faint is woven mist,
And the river's orient reaches
Are the palest amethyst.

Every limpid brook is singing
Of the lure of April days;
Every piney glen is ringing
With the maddest roundelays.

Come and let us seek together
Springtime lore of daffodils,
Giving to the golden weather
Greeting on the sun-warm hills."
-  Lucy Maud Montgomery, Spring Song 

"An altered look about the hills;
A Tyrian light the village fills;
A wider sunrise in the dawn;
A deeper twilight on the lawn;
A print of a vermilion foot;
A purple finger on the slope;
A flippant fly upon the pane;
A spider at his trade again;
An added strut in chanticleer;
A flower expected everywhere ..."
-  Emily Dickinson, Nature: April

"I gazed upon the glorious sky
And the green mountains round,
And thought that when I came to lie
At rest within the ground,
'Twere pleasant, that in flowery June
When brooks send up a cheerful tune,
And groves a joyous sound,
The sexton's hand, my grave to make,
The rich, green mountain-turf should break."
-  William Cullen Bryant, June 

"The year's at the spring,
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hill-side's dew-pearled;
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn;
God's in his Heaven—
All's right with the world!"
-  Robert Browning, The Year's at the Spring 

"It is the month of June,
The month of leaves and roses,
When pleasant sights salute the eyes
And pleasant scents the noses."
-  Nathaniel Parker Willis, The Month of June

Perennials for Every Purpose: Choose the Right Plants for Your Conditions, Your Garden, and Your Taste by Larry Hodgson

Detail of Flora from Primavera by Botticelli, c. 1482

"When the clouds shake their hyssops, and the rain
Like holy water falls upon the plain,
'Tis sweet to gaze upon the springing grain
And see your harvest born.
And sweet the little breeze of melody
The blackbord puffs upon the budding tree,
While the wild poppy lights upon the lea
And blazes 'mid the corn."
-  Francis Ledwidge, A Rainy Day in April 

"Science has never drummed up quite as effective a tranquilizing agent as a sunny spring day."
-  W. Earl Hall

"One week later ...
Six Directions of Green
Billions of leaf-buds."
-  Mike Garofalo, Cuttings 

"The country habit has me by the heart,
For he's bewitched forever who has seen,
Not with his eyes but with his vision, Spring
Flow down the woods and stipple leaves with sun."
-  Vita Sackville-West

"Again rejoicing Nature sees
Her robe assume its vernal hues
Her leafy locks wave in the breeze,
All freshly steep'd in the morning dews."
-  Robert Burns 

"It is one of the first days of Spring, and I sit once more in the old garden where I hear no faintest echo of the obscene rumbling of London streets which are yet so little away.  Here the only movement I am conscious of is that of the trees shooting forth their first sprays of bright green, and of the tulips expanding the radiant beauty of their flaming globes, and the only sound I hear is the blackbird's song -- the liquid softly gurgling notes that seem to well up spontaneously from an infinite joy, an infinite peace, at the heart of nature and bring a message not from some remote Heaven of the Sky or Future, but the Heaven that is Here, beneath our feet, even beneath the exquisite texture of our own skins, the joy, the peace, at the Heart of the Mystery which is Man.  For man alone can hear the Revelation that lies in the blackbird's song.
-  Havelock Ellis, Impressions and Comments, 1918

"If I had my life to live over, I would start barefoot earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall."
-  Nadine Stair

"Earth, my dearest, I will.  Oh believe me, you no longer need your springtimes to win me over - one of them, ah, even one, is already too much for my blood.  Unspeakably, I have belonged to you, from the first."
-  Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies, 9th, 1923

"This spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green,
Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes,
Thorn-blossom lifting in wreaths of smoke between
Where the wood fumes up and the watery, flickering rushes.
I am amazed at this spring, this conflagration
Of green fires lit on the soil of the earth, this blaze
Of growing, and sparks that puff in wild gyration,
Faces of people streaming across my gaze."
-  D. H. Lawrence, The Enkindled Spring

"The year's at the spring
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hill-side's dew-pearled;
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn:
God's in his heaven,
All's right with the world!"
-  Robert Browning 

"In June as many as a dozen species may burst their buds on a single day.  No man can heed all of these anniversaries; no man can ignore all of them."
-  Aldo Leopold

"Autumn arrives in the early morning, but spring at the close of a winter day."
-  Elizabeth Bowen 

"In the same way, you were happy in spring,
With the half colors of quarter-things,
The slightly brighter sky, the melting clouds,
The single bird, the obscure moon- The obscure moon lighting an obscure world
Of thing that would never be quite expressed,
Where you yourself were never quite yourself
And did not want nor have to be ..."
-  Wallace Stevens, The Motive for Metaphor  

"Gardener’s , like everyone else, live second by second and minute by minute.  What we see at one particular moment is then and there before us. But there is a second way of seeing.  Seeing with the eye of memory, not the eye of our anatomy, calls up days and seasons past and years gone by."
-  Allen Lacy, The Gardener’s Eye, 1992

"Hoe while it is spring, and enjoy the best anticipations.  It is not much matter if things do not turn out well."
-  Charles Dudley Warner

"The tree is stripped,
All color, fragrance gone,
Yet already on the bough,
Uncaring spring!"
-  Ikkyu, Zen Poems of China and Japan

"Mine is the Month of Roses; yes, and mine
The Month of Marriages! All pleasant sights
And scents, the fragrance of the blossoming vine,
The foliage of the valleys and the heights.
Mine are the longest days, the loveliest nights;
The mower's scythe makes music to my ear;
I am the mother of all dear delights;
I am the fairest daughter of the year."
-  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Summer makes me drowsy,
Autumn makes me sing,
Winter’s pretty lousy,
but I hate Spring."
-  Dorothy Parker

"Spring shows what God can do with a drab and dirty world."
-  Virgil A. Kraft 

"Will it always be like this until I am dead, 
Every spring must I bear it all again 
With the first red haze of the budding maple boughs, 
And the first sweet-smelling rain? 
Oh I am like a rock in the rising river 
Where the flooded water breaks with a low call -- 
Like a rock that knows the cry of the waters 
And cannot answer at all."
-  Sara, Spring Torrents

"Certain miracles that I beheld there have haunted my memory ever since: a gray April morning of sirocco, when the almond blossoms, the flaming tulips, the young green of the vines, hung as if painted on the motionless air; a summer night when the roses had an unearthly pallor under a half-eaten moon, whose ghostliness was somehow one with their perfume and with the phosphorescence of dew tipping their petals; a day when the trees stood part submerged in fog, into which leaves dropped slowly, slowly, one after another, and sank out of sight.
-  H. G. Dwight, Gardens and Gardening, Atlantic Monthly, 1912

"The naked earth is warm with Spring,
And with green grass and bursting trees
Leans to the sun's kiss glorying,
And quivers in the sunny breeze."
-  Julian Grenfell 

"The oak tree:
not interested
in cherry blossoms."
-  Basho

"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 remembered 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, Atalanta in Calydon

"No days such honored days as these! While yet
Fair Aphrodite reigned, men seeking wide
For some fair thing which should forever bide
On earth, her beauteous memory to set
In fitting frame that no age could forget,
Her name in lovely April's name did hide,
And leave it there, eternally allied
To all the fairest flowers Spring did beget."
-  Helen Hunt Jackson, Calendar of Sonnets - April, 1875 

"From all these trees,
in the salads, the soup, everywhere,
cherry blossoms fall."
-  Basho

"Now Nature hangs her mantle green
On every blooming tree,
And spreads her sheets o'daisies white
Out o'er the grassy lea."
-  Robert Burns

"The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day.
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You're one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
a cloud come over the sunlit arch,
And wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you're two months back in the middle of March."
-  Robert Frost

"A swarm of bees in May
Is worth a load of hay;
A swarm of bees in June
Is worth a silver spoon;
A swarm of bees in July
Is not worth a fly."
-  Rhyme from England

"Sun, my relative
Be good coming out
Do something good for us.
Make me work.
I can do anything in the garden;
I hoe, I plant corn, I irrigate."
-  Havasupai prayer

"In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the burnish'd dove;
In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.”
-  Alfred Lord Tennyson

"Let us dance in the sun, wearing wild flowers in our hair
and let us huddle together as darkness takes over
We are at home amidst the birds and the trees, for we are children of nature.
-  Susan Polis Shutz

"Winter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart."
-  Victor Hugo 

"On this June day the buds in my garden are almost as enchanting as the open flowers.  Things in bud bring, in the heat of a June noontide, the recollection of the loveliest days of the year - those days of May when all is suggested, nothing yet fulfilled."
-  Francis King

"The true harbinger of spring is not crocuses or swallows returning to Capistrano, but the sound of the bat on the ball."
-  Bill Veeck 

"Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough."
-  A. E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad, 1896

"To the garden of the world anew descending,
Potent mates, daughters, sons, preluding,
The love, the life of their bodies, meaning and being,
Curious here behold my resurrection after slumber,
The revolving cycles in their wide sweep having brought me again,
amorous, mature, all beautiful to me, all wondrous,
My limbs and the quivering fire that ever plays through them, for reasons, most wondrous,
Existing I peer and penetrate still,
Content with the present, content with the past,
By my side or back of me Eve following,
Or in front, and I following her just the same." 
-  Walt Whitman, To the Garden of the World 

"Every spring is the only spring - a perpetual astonishment."
-  Ellis Peters

"Spring is sooner recognized by plants than by men."
-  Chinese Proverb

"Spring has come,
Loudly sing cuckoo !
Groweth seed and blooms mead
And springs the wood now.
Sing cuckoo!"
-  English Poetry from the Middle Ages

"That God once loved a garden we learn in Holy writ.
And seeing gardens in the Spring I well can credit it."
-  Winifred Mary Letts

"Spring slattern of seasons
you have soggy legs
and a muddy petticoat
drowsy

is your hair your
eyes are sticky with
dream and you have a sloppy body from

being brought to bed of crocuses
when you sing in your whisky voice
the grass rises on the head of the earth
and all the trees are put on edge

spring
of the excellent jostle of
thy hips
and the superior."
-  E. E. Cummings, Spring Onmipotent Goddess Thou

"One attraction in coming to the woods to live was that I should have leisure and opportunity to see the spring come in."
-  Henry David Thoreau

"The thorn tree just began to bud
And greening stained the sheltering hedge,
An many a violet beside the wood
Peeped blue between the withered sedge;
The sun gleamed warm the bank beside,
'Twas pleasant wandering out a while
Neath nestling bush to lonely hide,
Or bend a musings o'er a stile."
-  John Clare, 1840 

"The fields are snowbound no longer;
There are little blue lakes and flags of tenderest green.
The snow has been caught up into the sky--
So many white clouds--and the blue of the sky is cold.
Now the sun walks in the forest,
He touches the bows and stems with his golden fingers;
They shiver, and wake from slumber.
Over the barren branches he shakes his yellow curls.
Yet is the forest full of the sound of tears....
A wind dances over the fields.
Shrill and clear the sound of her waking laughter,
Yet the little blue lakes tremble
And the flags of tenderest green bend and quiver."
-  Katherine Mansifield, Very Early Spring

The Dry Gardening Handbook: Plants and Practices for a Changing Climate by Oliver Flippi

Drought Resistant Planting by Beth Chatto 

Xeriscape Handbook: A How-to Guide to Natural Resource-Wise Gardening by Gale Weinstein

The Low-Water Flower Gardener by Eric Johnson

Western Landscaping Book by Kathleen Bresnel

All About Dry Climate Gardening by Ortho 

Plants For Dry Climates: How To Select, Grow, And Enjoy  by Mary Duffield 

Landscape Plants For Dry Regions: More Than 600 Species From Around The World by Warren Jones 

"The spring is fresh and fearless
And every leaf is new,
The world is brimmed with moonlight,
The lilac brimmed with dew.

Here in the moving shadows
I catch my breath and sing --
My heart is fresh and fearless
And over-brimmed with spring."
-  Sara Teasdale, May Night, 1920

"See what delights in sylvan scenes appear!
Descending Gods have found Elysium here.
In woods bright Venus with Adonis stray'd,
And chaste Diana haunts the forest shade.
Come lovely nymph, and bless the silent hours,
When swains from shearing seek their nightly bow'rs;
When weary reapers quit the sultry field,
And crown'd with corn, their thanks to Ceres yield.
This harmless grove no lurking viper hides,
But in my breast the serpent Love abides.
Here bees from blossoms sip the rosy dew,
But your Alexis knows no sweets but you.
Oh deign to visit our forsaken seats,
The mossy fountains, and the green retreats!
Where-e'er you walk, cool gales shall fan the glade,
Trees, where you sit, shall crowd into a shade,
Where-e'er you tread, the blushing flow'rs shall rise,
And all things flourish where you turn your eyes."
-  Alexander Pope, Summer

"Spring has again returned. 
The Earth is like a child that knows many poems.
Many, O so many.  For the hardship
of such long learning she receives the prize.

Strict was her teacher. 
The white in the old man's beard pleases us.
Now, what to call green, to call blue,
we dare to ask: She knows, She knows!"
-  Rainer Marie Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus, XXI

"Spring everywhere -
cottonwood seed fluff
under each foot."
-  Michael Garofalo, Cuttings 

"Spring makes everything look filthy."
-  Katherine Whitehorn 

"Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night."  
-  Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke 

"Spring passes and one remembers one's innocence. Summer passes and one remembers one's exuberance.
Autumn passes and one remembers one's reverence. Winter passes and one remembers one's perseverance."
-  Yoko Ono

 Ostara: Customs, Spells & Rituals for the Rites of Spring By Edain McCoy

Easter, Passover, and Other Spring Festivals by Ann Morrill 

Beltane: Springtime Rituals, Lore and Celebration by Raven Grimassi

In Celebration of Spring: A Book of Seasonal Indulgences by Helen Thompson 

Spring: Recipes Inspired by Nature's Bounty (Williams-Sonoma Seasonal Celebration) by Joanne Weir

The Spring Equinox: Celebrating the Greening of the Earth by Ellen Jackson

"The sun is on fire
In the sky
And in its warmth
Flowers open
In the garden
And the butterfly
Flutters by."
-  Stanley Cook

"Now every field is clothed with grass, and every tree with leaves; now the woods put forth their blossoms, and the year assumes its gay attire."
-  Virgil

"For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth, the time of singing has come
and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.
The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom;
they give forth fragrance.
Arise my love, my fair one,
and come away."
-  The Song of Solomon, 2:11-13

"Walking around
an early spring garden--
going nowhere."
-  Kyoshi

"Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses, a box where sweets compacted lie."
-  George Herbert

"And what is so rare as a day in June?
Then, if ever, come perfect days;
Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune,
And over it softly her warm ear lays."
-  James Russell Lowell

"Every year back spring comes, with nasty little birds, yapping their fool heads off and the ground all mucked up with plants."
-  Dorothy Parker

"But each spring a gardening instinct, sure as the sap rising in the trees, stirs within us.  We look about and decide to tame another little bit of ground."
-  Lewis Gantt 

"One swallow does not make a summer, but one skein of geese, cleaving the murk of March thaw, is the Spring."
-  Aldo Leopold  

"There ought to be Gardens for all Months in the year, in which, severally, things of Beauty may be then in season." 
-  Sir Francis Bacon

"This outward spring and garden are a reflection of the inward garden."
-  Rumi

"There is nothing like the first hot days of spring when the gardener stops wondering if it's too soon to plant the dahlias and starts wondering if it's too late.  Even the most beautiful weather will not allay the gardener's notion (well-founded actually) that he is somehow too late, too soon, or that he has too much stuff going on or not enough.  For the garden is the stage on which the gardener exults and agonizes out every crest and chasm of the heart."
-  Henry Mitchell, The Essential Earthman  

"Now is the time of the illuminated woods ... when every leaf glows like a tiny lamp."
-  J. Burroughs 

"I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers:
Of April, May, or June, and July flowers.
I sing of Maypoles, Hock-carts, wassails, wakes,
Of bridegrooms, brides, and of the bridal cakes."
-  Robert Herrick, Hesperides, 1648

"What joy have I in June's return?
My feet are parched--my eyeballs burn,
I scent no flowery gust;
But faint the flagging zephyr springs,
With dry Macadam on its wings,
And turns me 'dust to dust.' "
-  Thomas Hood, Town and Country

"One of the greatest virtues of gardening is this perpetual renewal of youth and spring, of promise of flower and fruit that can always be read in the open book of the garden, by those with an eye to see, and a mind to understand." 
-  E.A. Bowles 

"You can't see Canada across lake Erie, but you know it's there.  It's the same with spring.  You have to have faith, especially in Cleveland."
-  Paul Fleischman, Seedfolks 

"I don't know what smell of wet earth or rotting leaves brought back my childhood with a rush and all the happy days I had spent in a garden.  Shall I ever forget that day?  It was the beginning of my real life, my coming of age as it were, and entering into my kingdom.  Early March, gray, quiet skies, and brown, quiet earth; leafless and sad and lonely enough out there in the damp and silence, yet there I stood feeling the same rapture of pure delight in the first breath of spring that I used to as a child, and the five wasted years fell from me like a cloak, and the world was full of hope, and I vowed myself then andthere to nature and have been happy ever since."
-  Elizabeth von Arnim, Elizabeth & Her German Garden, 1898

"What potent blood hath modest May."
-  Ralph Waldo Emerson 

"To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring."
-  George Santayana

"O the green things growing the green things growing,
The fair sweet smell of the green things growing."
-  Dinah Mulock Craik 

"The world's favorite season is the spring. 
All things seem possible in May."
-  Edwin Way Teale 

"The month of June is probably named after Juno, the wife of Jupiter, and queen of the gods [Hera in Greek mythology]. It was held sacred to her, and was thought by the Romans to be the luckiest month for marriage, since Juno was the Goddess of Marriage. Wherever the goddess went she was attended by her messenger Iris (the Rainbow), who journeyed so quickly through the air that she was seldom seen, but after she had passed there was often left in the sky the radiant trail of her highly-coloured robe.  Juno is always represented as a tall, beautiful woman, wearing a crown and bearing a sceptre in her hand, and often she is shown with a peacock at her side, since that bird was sacred to her.  A story is told of one of her servants, Argus, who had a hundred eyes, only a few of which he closed at a time. Juno set him to watch over a cow which Jupiter wished to steal, for it was really a beautiful girl named Io, whom Jupiter had transformed. Mercury was sent by Jupiter to carry off Io, and by telling long and wearisome stories to Argus at last succeeded in lulling him into so deep a sleep that he closed all his eyes. The god then seized Argus's own sword and cut off his head.  Juno was very sad at the loss of her servant, and gathering up his hundred eyes scattered them over the tail of the peacock, her favourite bird."  
-   Stories of the Months and Days   [Compare with Sarasvati, Hindu River Goddess, Patron of the Arts and Sciences, with a Peacock or Swan as her totem.] 

"O Day after day we can't help growing older.
Year after year spring can't help seeming younger.
Come let's enjoy our winecup today,
Nor pity the flowers fallen."
-  Wang Wei, On Parting with Spring  

"When there's new growth bursting out all over, everything fresh, green, and flourishing, the plants are little rockets of success going off every time you look at them."
-  Jacqueline Heriteau

"Break open
A cherry tree
And there are no flowers,
But the spring breeze
Brings forth myriad blossoms."
-  Ikkyu Sojun, 1394-1481

"Spring unlocks the flowers to paint the laughing soil."
-  Reginald Heber

"In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candle-light.
In summer quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.

I have to go to bed and see
The birds still hopping on the tree,
Or hear the grown-up people's feet
Still going past me in the street.

And does it not seem hard to you,
When all the sky is clear and blue,
And I should like so much to play,
To have to go to bed by day?"
-  Robert Louis Stevenson, Bed in Summer 

Backyard Bird Secrets for Every Season: Attract a Variety of Nesting, Feeding, and Singing Birds Year-Round by Sally Roth

In Nature's Honor: Myths And Rituals Celebrating The Earth by Patricia Montley.  Respectful and engaging review. 

The Druidry Handbook: Spiritual Practice Rooted in the Living Earth by John Michael Greer

Reasons for the Seasons: Origins of the Christian Holidays by Jason Hunt

Creating Circles & Ceremonies: Rituals for All Seasons And Reasons by Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart. This is a valuable collection of information, poetry, rituals, songs, and craft activities for seasonal celebrations.     

"Thirty days hath September,
April, June, and November,
February eight-and-twenty all alone,
And all the rest have thirty-one;
Unless that leap year doth combine,
And give to February twenty-nine."
-  Richard Grafton

"The hum of bees is the voice of the garden." 
-  Elizabeth Lawrence

"The afternoon is bright,
with spring in the air,
a mild March afternoon,
with the breath of April stirring,
I am alone in the quiet patio
looking for some old untried illusion -
some shadow on the whiteness of the wall
some memory asleep
on the stone rim of the fountain,
perhaps in the air
the light swish of some trailing gown."
-  Antonio Machado

"Ahh, the wide almond groves in full white flower
Stunning in the morning sun.
Old naked Winter in his garb of grays and browns has run.
Forsythia blooms come and go in the blink of a yellow Eye,
Then, suddenly, mysteriously, Green erupts; and we sigh."
-  Michael P. Garofalo 

"One flower does not bring spring.
A good year is determined by its spring."
-  Afghan proverbs 

"Spring - An experience in immortality."
-  Henry D. Thoreau

"Swiftly the years, beyond recall,
Solemn the stillness of this fair morning,
I will clothe myself in spring-clothing,
And visit the slopes of the Eastern Hill,
By the mountain-stream a mist hovers,
Hovers a moment, then scatters,
There comes a wind blowing from the south
That brushes the fields of new corn."
-  Chinese poem, Translated by Arthur Waley

"The crocuses and the larch turning green every year a week before the others and the pastures red with uneaten sheep's placentas and the long summer days and the newmown hay and the wood pigeon in the morning and the cuckoo in the afternoon and the corncrake in the evening and the wasps in the jam and the smell of grose and the look of the gorse and the apples falling and the children walking in the dead leaves and the larch turning brown a week before the others and the chestnuts falling and the howling winds and the sea breaking over the pier and the first fires and the hooves on the road and the consumptive postman whistling "The Roses are Blooming in Picardy" and the standard oil-lamp and of course the snow and to be sure the sleet and bless your heart the slush and every fourth year the February debacle and the endless April showers and the crocuses and then the whole bloody business starting all over again."
-  Samuel Beckett, Watt 

"The country ever has a lagging Spring,
Waiting for May to call its violets forth,
And June its roses--showers and sunshine bring,
Slowly, the deepening verdure o'er the earth;
To put their foliage out, the woods are slack,
And one by one the singing-birds come back.

Within the city's bounds the time of flowers
Comes earlier. Let a mild and sunny day,
Such as full often, for a few bright hours,
Breathes through the sky of March the airs of May,
Shine on our roofs and chase the wintry gloom--
And lo! our borders glow with sudden bloom."
-  William Cullen Bryant, Spring in Town, 1850

"So Spring comes merry towards me here, but earns
No answering smile from me, whose life is twin'd
With the dead boughs that winter still must bind,
And whom today the Spring no more concerns.
Behold, this crocus is a withering flame;
This snowdrop, snow; this apple-blossom's part
To breed the fruit that breeds the serpent's art.
Nay, for these Spring-flowers, turn thy face from them,
Nor stay till on the year's last lily-stem
The white cup shrivels round the golden heart."
-  Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Barren Spring, 1870

"Now every field is clothed with grass, and every tree with leaves;
Now the woods put forth their blossoms, and the year assumes it's gay attire."
-  Virgil

"March in the garden -
my hostess shows me brown sticks
and speaks of flowers."
-  Sister Benedicta 

'Are we to look at cherry blossoms only in full bloom, the moon only when it is cloudless?  To long for the moon while looking on the rain, to lower the blinds and be unaware of the passing of the spring - these are even more deeply moving.  Branches about to blossom or gardens strewn with flowers are worthier of our admiration."
-  Yoshida Kenko

"Good weather all the week, but come the weekend the weather stinks. 
Springtime for birth, Summertime for growth; and all Seasons for dying.
Ripening grapes in the summer sun - reason enough to plod ahead. 
Springtime flows in our veins.  
Beauty is the Mistress, the gardener Her salve. 
A soul is colored Spring green.  
Complexity is closer to the truth. 
When the Divine knocks, don't send a prophet to the door. 
All metaphors aside - only living beings rise up in the Springtime; dead beings stay quite lie down dead. 
Winter does not turn into Summer; ash does not turn into firewood - on the chopping block of time. 
Fresh fruit from the tree - sweet summertime! 
Gardens are demanding pets. 
Shade was the first shelter. 
One spring and one summer to know life's hope; one autumn and one winter to know life's fate. 
Somehow, someway, everything gets eaten up, someday. 
Relax and be still around the bees. 
Paradise and shade are close relatives on a summer day. 
Absolutes squirm beneath realities. 
The spiders, grasshoppers, mantis, and moth larva are all back:  the summer crowd has returned!
To garden is to open your heart to the sky.
Dirty fingernails and a calloused palm precede a Green Thumb." 
-   Michael P. Garofalo, Pulling Onions 

"Earth is dry to the center,
But spring, a new comer,
A spring rich and strange,
Shall make the winds blow
Round and round,
Thro' and thro' ,
Here and there,
Till the air
And the ground
Shall be fill'd with life anew."
-  Alfred Tennyson, Nothing Will Die

"The month of May was come, when every lusty heart beginneth to blossom, and to bring forth fruit; for like as herbs and trees bring forth fruit and flourish in May, in likewise every lusty heart that is in any manner a lover, springeth and flourisheth in lusty deeds.  For it giveth unto all lovers courage, that lusty month of May."  
-  Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte d'Arthur, 1485 

"My heart that was rapt away by the wild cherry blossoms - will it return to my body when they scatter?"
-  Kotomichi 

"Sprigs of plum by the corner of the wall
Are blooming alone in the cold;
If not for the subtle fragrance drifting over
Who could tell this from snow on the boughs."
-  Wang Anshi, Plum Blossom, 1060