Harshness vanished. A sudden softness
has replaced the meadows’ wintry grey.
Little rivulets of water changed
their singing accents. Tendernesses,
hesitantly, reach toward the earth
from space, and country lanes are showing
these unexpected subtle risings
that find expression in the empty trees.
“No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn.” ~ Hal Borland
Shel Silverstein
Oh the changing of the seasons it’s a pretty thing to see
And though I find this balmy weather pleasin’
There’s the wind come from tomorrow and I hear it callin’ me
And I’m bound for the changing of the seasons
Oh it’s blowin’ in Chicago and it’s snowin’ up in Maine
And the Islands to the south are warm and sunny
And I’ve got to feel the earth shake and I gotta feel the rain
And I’ve got to know a taste of more than honey
So don’t ask me where I’m goin’ or how long I’m gonna be away
Don’t make me give you all the hollow reasons
I’ll think of you like summer and I might be back some day
When my heart miss the changing of the seasons
Oh it’s blowin’ in Chicago…
[ guitar ]
Oh it’s nothing that you said and it ain’t nothing that you done
And I wish I could explain you why I’m leavin’
But there’s some men need the winter and there’s some men need the sun
And there’s some men need the changing of the seasons
Yeah it’s blowin’ in Chicago…
Four Seasons fill the measure of the year;
There are four seasons in the mind of man:
He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear
Takes in all beauty with an easy span:
He has his Summer, when luxuriously
Spring’s honied cud of youthful thought he loves
To ruminate, and by such dreaming high
Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves
His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings
He furleth close; contented so to look
On mists in idleness—to let fair things
Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook.
He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,
Or else he would forego his mortal nature.
Sorrow, quit me for a while!
Wintry days are over;
Hope again, with April smile,
Violets sows and clover.
Pleasure follows in her path,
Love itself flies after,
And the brook a music hath
Sweet as childhood’s laughter.
Not a bird upon the bough
Can repress its rapture,
Not a bud that blossoms now
But doth beauty capture.
Sorrow, thou art Winter’s mate,
Spring cannot regret thee;
Yet, ah, yet—my friend of late—
I shall not forget thee!
Your spring will come. As the sparrow in this photo waits patiently for spring, your spring will come.
Winter Trees
William Carlos Williams
To The Thawing Wind
Robert Frost
Come with rain, O loud Southwester!
Bring the singer, bring the nester;
Give the buried flower a dream;
Make the settled snow-bank steam;
Find the brown beneath the white;
But whate’er you do to-night,
Bathe my window, make it flow,
Melt it as the ice will go;
Melt the glass and leave the sticks
Like a hermit’s crucifix;
Burst into my narrow stall;
Swing the picture on the wall;
Run the rattling pages o’er;
Scatter poems on the floor;
Turn the poet out of door.
Craving for Spring
D. H. Lawrence
I wish it were spring in the world.
Let it be spring!
Come, bubbling, surging tide of sap!
Come, rush of creation!
Come, life! surge through this mass of mortification!
Come, sweep away these exquisite, ghastly first-flowers,
which are rather last-flowers!
Come, thaw down their cool portentousness, dissolve them:
snowdrops, straight, death-veined exhalations of white and purple crocuses,
flowers of the penumbra, issue of corruption, nourished in mortification,
jets of exquisite finality;
Come, spring, make havoc of them!
The days continue to grow shorter in the northern hemisphere. Nights are colder. Winter is only a few weeks away. It is a season where the north winds bite our face and turn our ears red. It is a season where snow will cover the ground and life enters a dormant stage. It is a season for reflecting on where we’re heading. If we’re not happy with our direction, we can think about where we want to go. It’s not by accident that spring follows winter and is filled with new life and hope. After this winter, a new spring awaits you. It’s still a way off, but it will come. Use winter to prepare for the new life that will arise in you.
