At last it is Spring. Not that there is any ‘at last’ about it, as these days (‘at my age’) Spring seems to arrive the day after the day after New Year’s Day. Life hurries along. Which is another good reason for recording things- the January days of waking up in the dark, going to bed in the dark; then Candlemas, the festival of light, which takes place halfway between the shortest day and the spring equinox, on February the 2nd. And then the vernal equinox, when the sun crosses the equator, which happened this year at 3.06 UTC March 20th. UTC is Coordinated Universal Time, the successor to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).
And now here we are, March 27th, 2024, sunrise 5.43 am, sunset 6.27 pm. 12 hours 44 minutes of light.
Spring, the sweete spring, is the yeres pleasant King,
Then bloomes eche thing, then maydes daunce in a ring,
Cold doeth not sting, the pretty birds doe sing,
Cuckow, jugge, jugge, pu we, to witta woo.
Thomas Nashe 1567-1601
Thomas Nashe wrote prose, poems, pamphlets and plays. He collaborated with both Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson, and possibly helped with (wrote part of/wrote most of?) Shakespeare’s Henry VI Part One. (Though God forbid that I should speculate or comment in any way on the controversy about who wrote the plays attributed to Shakespeare!)
I don’t see any maids dancing in a ring, but birdsong and blooms are still with us. It was quiet in January, but the birds came back, and now there is a marvellous racket every morning when they all start shouting for their breakfast, or whatever it is they shout about.
There's nothing quite like the beginning of Spring.
It brings to an end the wearisome waiting,
Almost the same as becoming sixteen
With a spring in your step as life truly begins.
More proximate though the bound in your pulse
As you gaze at the sunset over Dungeness-
Its pale light shimmers the sea, the gulls
Seem to dance, their silhouettes soar and plunge-
Than the image over which you fussed
As you moved away, further- o much much
Further than Dungeness! further than love
Could carry you or reach you- 'twas ever thus
At sweet sixteen, sweet spring, the enchanted light
That holds in suspense the sea, youth's first flight,
Hope, all things that grow, bring the white
Cherry blossom, equinox, the days, the magical nights.
There's nothing like spring but last spring, and the next.
The sun completes its setting, the sea repents,
Becomes familiar again; lusty lads and wenches
Drink on the beach, look out for the bounty of shipwrecks.
I called that 'Spring Song' when I wrote it (not sure when- 2017-18 perhaps) but the question then arises 'Can you sing it?' (What would you do if I sang out of tune? Would you stand up and walk out on me?)
And why this new title- Mankind Cannot Bear Too Many Dreams? It refers- of course- to Eliot’s ‘mankind cannot bear too much reality’, and by ‘dreams’ I mean, or at least I think I mean, both the dreams you have while you are sleeping, and dreams in the sense of aspirations, desires.
I am not the master of my dreams
I cannot be the master of my dreams...
More to follow; perhaps.
freeversefolkestone 