In the Midwest, spring rarely lines up with the calendar. I was thrilled when my crocus came up this year and weren’t thwarted even after their tender buds were buried twice under a pile of snow. My hyacinths and tulips started their upward climb through the dirt and have thus far survived the temperatures dropping back down to winter-levels. Even though the forecast of snow this week makes me grumble a bit, just seeing their green leaves sticking out reminds me that winter will not last forever — spring is coming.
To gird up my outlook, I went in search of spring quotes and thought I’d share a few that seem fitting for this early stage of the season — the barely hinted at spring.
A Few Bits of Springish Fiction
Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden:
“Is the spring coming?” he said. “What is it like?”
“It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine…”
Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast:
When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest. The only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep from making engagements, each day had no limits. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.
L.M. Montgomery, Anne’s House of Dreams:
“It always amazes me to look at the little, wrinkled brown seeds and think of the rainbows in ’em,” said Captain Jim. “When I ponder on them seeds I don’t find it nowise hard to believe that we’ve got souls that’ll live in other worlds. You couldn’t hardly believe there was life in them tiny things, some no bigger than grains of dust, let alone colour and scent, if you hadn’t seen the miracle, could you?”
A Few Poetic Lines on Spring
Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere)arranging
a window,into which people look
A Light exists in Spring
Not present on the Year
At any other period —
When March is scarcely here
A Color stands abroad
On Solitary Fields
That Science cannot overtake
But Human Nature feels.
Now I’m curious about Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast – has anyone read that? My introvert-self laughed and high-fived this quote. Then he makes such an unexpectedly lovely turn — acknowledging the people who are as good as spring itself. What a wonderful way to describe such people. I’m glad I know a good few of them.
I also think I need to reread The Secret Garden — what magic that story still holds in my mind. Did anyone see the old movie from the 80s? I think that’s the one where at the end you see the kids grown up. I loved that movie; wonder if it would still hold up? As a kid I always hoped I’d either stumble into Narnia or find myself a secret garden. Neither has happened — yet.
Spring is coming — may you see some sign of it (or meet some of its people) today!
→Kindle-editions available here: The Secret Garden, A Moveable Feast, Anne’s House of Dreams, ee cummings, and Emily Dickinson.←
My sister and I used to LOVE that film of The Secret Garden when we were young! I think we actually wore out our VHS — we watched that and The Little Princess as often as our mom would let us. :)
Beautiful quotes. So glad that Spring has arrived.
I know I watched and like The Little Princess, too, but I can’t really remember it. Was there a little monkey in it?
slight departure…
Miss Bet(h)… do you realize the power of such a tiny word? “yet”…
long before people were turning an entire sentence back upon itself with a delayed… NOT!
before that, was a “Yet”. it hasn’t happened. YET… (but it still could) the child who once believed in Narnia and Secret Gardens and spring is still in there. somewhere. i hope she never leaves. nor does mine.
I have long known the power of “yet” and sprinkle it liberally across my days, awaiting the flowers that will one day come from its seeds.