...when life's alive in everything

The goutweed (Aegopodium podagraria) is coming in full force. I wish the Spring was as eager to join us!
A couple of weeks ago we had some lovely afternoons in the sun — but since then it has been too cold, even for us fresh-air-fanatics, to spend any time on the veranda.
Today started out gorgeous, but cold — the nights are still quite cold, usually under the freezing point.

Spring
Frost-locked all the winter,
Seeds, and roots, and stones of fruits,
What shall make their sap ascend
That they may put forth shoots?
Tips of tender green,
Leaf, or blade, or sheath;
Telling of the hidden life
That breaks forth underneath,
Life nursed in its grave by Death.

.
Blows the thaw-wind pleasantly,
Drips the soaking rain,
By fits looks down the waking sun:
Young grass springs on the plain;
Young leaves clothe early hedgerow trees;
Seeds, and roots, and stones of fruits,
Swollen with sap put forth their shoots;
Curled-headed ferns sprout in the lane;
Birds sing and pair again.

.
There is no time like Spring,
When life's alive in everything,
Before new nestlings sing,
Before cleft swallows speed their journey back
Along the trackless track---
God guides their wing,
He spreads their table that they nothing lack,---
Before the daisy grows a common flower,
Before the sun has power
To scorch the world up in his noontide hour.

.
There is no time like Spring,
Like Spring that passes by;
There is no life like Spring-life born to die,---
Piercing the sod,
Clothing the uncouth clod,
Hatched in the nest,
Fledged on the windy bough,
Strong on the wing:
There is no time like Spring that passes by,
Now newly born, and now
Hastening to die.
............ Christina Rossetti

Lucka 17

The best of a book is not the thought

which it contains, but the thought which it

suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not

in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts.
0000000 Oliver Wendell Holmes

Reading by Lamplight,

Georg Clausen (1852-1944)

WINTER: MY SECRET

I tell my secret? No indeed, not I:
Perhaps some day, who knows?
But not today ; it froze, and blows, and snows,
And you're too curious: fie!
You want to hear it? well:
Only, my secret's mine, and I won't tell.

Or, after all, perhaps there's none:
Suppose there is no secret after all,
But only just my fun.
Today's a nipping day, a biting day;
In which one wants a shawl,
A veil, a cloak, and other wraps:
I cannot ope to every one who taps,
And let the draughts come whistling thro' my hall;
Come bounding and surrounding me,
Come buffeting, astounding me,
Nipping and clipping thro' my wraps and all.
I wear my mask for warmth: who ever shows
His nose to Russian snows
To be pecked at by every wind that blows?
You would not peck? I thank you for good will,
Believe, but leave that truth untested still.

Spring's an expansive time: yet I don't trust
March with its peck of dust,
Nor April with its rainbow-crowned brief showers,
Nor even May, whose flowers
One frost may wither thro' the sunless hours.

Perhaps some languid summer day,
When drowsy birds sing less and less,
And golden fruit is ripening to excess,
If there's not too much sun nor too much cloud,
And the warm wind is neither still nor loud,
Perhaps my secret I may say,
Or you may guess.

Christina Rossetti
1830 - 1894