Spring Trees Quotes & Sayings

In a world where thrushes sing and willow trees are golden in the spring, boredom should have been included among the seven deadly sins. — Elizabeth Goudge

Being born in a place is only one way to belong, nor do you have to die there....

I knew at once that Magdala was home because I felt sighted there again, second sighted. It was not only the spring. In time everything spoke.

When birds rose into the air, I could read the pattern of their wings, and the path the wind made on the water carried messages. The very ground said make a path here, plant herbs there. These vine are not dead. Tend them and they'll bear fruit again.

Ancient trees offered shelter and wisdom as well as olives. And there were certain rocks that could absorb fatigue or agitation, leaving me refreshed and calm. — Elizabeth Cunningham

I'm an alien in my own world, a writer without words, a musician without a piano, a magician without a wand. I am fooled by infinite words that rush in my blood, yet imprisoned by the very thoughts of silence. I'm a gray green fallow leaf on trees and abandoned on the streets, a never-ending spring season and an eternal autumn. I'm the golden of the sun and the silver of the moon, the fog of dawn and the amber of dusk. I'm the white and the red flag , the obedient and the rebel. I am the coward in the brave, and the child in the man. I am, but a writer. — Nema Al-Araby

What is more cheerful, now, in the fall of the year, than an open-wood-fire? Do you hear those little chirps and twitters coming out of that piece of apple-wood? Those are the ghosts of the robins and blue-birds that sang upon the bough when it was in blossom last Spring. In Summer whole flocks of them come fluttering about the fruit-trees under the window: so I have singing birds all the year round. — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Spring comes to the Australian Alps like an invisible spirit. There is not the tremendous surge of upthrust life that there is in the lowland valleys, and no wild flowers bloom in the snow mountains till the early summer, but there is an immense stirring of excitement. A bright red and blue lowrie flits through the trees; snow thaws, and the streams become full of foaming water; the grey, flattened grass grows upwards again and becomes greener; wild horses start to lose their winter coats and find new energy; wombats sit, round and fat, blinking in the evening sunshine; at night there is the cry of a dingo to its mate. — Elyne Mitchell

Spring came late, but when it came it was hand-in-hand with summer, and almost at once everything was baking and warm, and in the villages the people danced every night on concrete dancing floors under the plane trees ... — Nancy Mitford

Woods were ringed with a colour so soft, so subtle that it could scarcely be said to be a colour at all. It was more the idea of a colour - as if the trees were dreaming green dreams or thinking green thoughts. — Susanna Clarke

With so many trees in the city, you could see the spring coming each day until a night of warm wind would bring it suddenly in one morning. Sometimes the heavy cold rains would beat it back so that it would seem that it would never come and that you were losing a season out of your life. This was the only truly sad time in Paris because it was unnatural. You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintry light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person had died for no reason.
In those days, though, the spring always came finally but it was frightening that it had nearly failed. — Ernest Hemingway,

The Jetavana Temple bells
ring the passing of all things.
Twinned sala trees, white in full flower,
declare the great man's certain fall.
The arrogant do not long endure:
They are like a dream one night in spring.
The bold and brave perish in the end:
They are as dust before the wind. — Royall Tyler

Winter came to an end, and spring arrived, in its fully glory. I remember looking at the blooming trees and flowers and thinking of how incongruous is the beauty of nature against the ugliness of man. — Henry Orenstein

He wondered if he would live to see the blossom on his apple trees and felt an answering pop inside himself. Ah, so it would not be long now. It began to snow lightly, the last flakes to fall before the spring. He put on his wedding finery, the clothes he had worn so long ago when he married his beloved Pamposh, and which he had kept all this time wrapped in tissue paper in a trunk. As a bridegroom he went outdoors and the snowflakes caressed his grizzled cheeks. His mind was alert, he was ambulatory and nobody was waiting for him with a club. He had his body and his mind and it seemed he was to be spared a brutal end. That at least was kind. He went into his apple orchard, seated himself cross-legged beneath a tree, closed his eyes, heard the verses of the Rig-Veda fill the world with beauty and ceased upon the midnight with no pain. — Salman Rushdie

Oh, my poor little hawthorns," I was assuring them through my sobs, "it isn't you who want me to be unhappy, to force me to leave you. You, you've never done me any harm. So I shall always love you." And, drying my eyes, I promised them that, when I grew up, I would never copy the foolish example of other men, but that even in Paris, on fine spring days, instead of paying calls and listening to silly talk, I would set off for the country to see the first hawthorn-trees in bloom. — Marcel Proust

When an almond tree became covered with blossoms in the heart of winter, all the trees around it began to jeer. 'What vanity,' they screamed, 'what insolence! Just think, it believes it can bring spring in this way!' The flowers of the almond tree blushed for shame. 'Forgive me, my sisters,' said the tree. 'I swear I did not want to blossom, but suddenly I felt a warm springtime breeze in my heart. — Nikos Kazantzakis

Buttercups and daisies,
Oh, the pretty flowers;
Coming ere the spring time,
To tell of sunny hours.
When the trees are leafless;
When the fields are bare;
Buttercups and daisies
Spring up here and there. — Mary Howitt

Outside, I could smell the Zebra. Even if for some reason I stopped feeling cold or hot or rain or sun, I bet I could close my eyes and still tell which season I was in just by the smell of the trees and dirt there. Spring was sweet mud and flowers. Fall has a kind of moldy edge to it, and winter was all dust and bark. As for summer, the Zebra carried a mossy, thick aroma full of baking leaves and oozing sap, which I guessed was its growing smell. — Adina Rishe Gewirtz

We all know that a winter scene, though it may be covered over one day, with even the trees dressed in shawls of snow, will be unrecognizable the following spring. Yet I never imagined such a thing could occur within our very selves. — Arthur Golden

Your growing antlers,' Bambi continued, 'are proof of your intimate place in the forest, for of all the things that live and grow only the trees and the deer shed their foliage each year and replace it more strongly, more magnificently, in the spring. Each year the trees grow larger and put on more leaves. And so you too increase in size and wear a larger, stronger crown. — Felix Salten

I walk in the garden, I look at the flowers and shrubs and trees and discover in them an exquisiteness of contour, a vitality of edge, or a vigour of spring, as well as an infinite variety of colour that no artefact I have seen in the last sixty years can rival ... each day, as I look, I wonder where my eyes were yesterday. — Bernard Berenson

Through, like the kind that spring up on the most perfect summer days, tossing the leaves of the trees and flowing past like heavenly water. A divine breeze. It changed everything, shifting the world around me into an even higher octave, a higher vibration. Although I still had little language — Eben Alexander

SPRING Somewhere a black bear has just risen from sleep and is staring down the mountain. All night in the brisk and shallow restlessness of early spring I think of her, her four black fists flicking the gravel, her tongue like a red fire touching the grass, the cold water. There is only one question: how to love this world. I think of her rising like a black and leafy ledge to sharpen her claws against the silence of the trees. Whatever else my life is with its poems and its music and its glass cities, it is also this dazzling darkness coming down the mountain, breathing and tasting; all day I think of her - her white teeth, her wordlessness, her perfect love. — Mary Oliver

And I want to eat at a table with my own silver and I want candles. And I want it to be spring and I want to brush my hair out in front of a mirror and I want a kitty and I want some new clothes.
"Oh, shut up and get something to read," George said. He was reading again.
His wife was looking out of the window. It was quite dark now and still raining in the palm trees. "Anyway, I want a cat," she said. "I want a cat. I want a cat now. If I can't have long hair or any fun, I can have a cat." George was not listening. He was reading his book. His wife looked out of the window where the light had come on in the square. — Ernest Hemingway,

It didn't occur to me that I never named my own mystery illness the spring before (except to misdiagnose it to friends as mono), because I'd been afraid to admit, even to my mother, how much I'd wanted to lie down somewhere and hide. Black women, tall and strong as cypress trees, didn't pull that. Pain and shame and cowardice and fear had to be kept secret. — Lorene Cary

This afternoon I sat at my window and alternately wrote at my new serial and watched a couple of dear, amusing, youngish maple-trees at the foot of the garden. They whispered secrets to each other all the afternoon. They would bend together and talk earnestly for a few moments, then spring back and look at each other, throwing up their hands comically in horror and amazement over their mutual revelations. I wonder what new scandal is afoot in Treeland. — L.M. Montgomery

The moods of a river change from hour to hour and day to day. It can be still and serene as a glassy mirror, reflecting the clouds that pass over it and the trees on its banks. Or, when a light breeze springs up, the surface of the river may be broken into little diamond lights reflecting the distant sun. — Ernie Lyons

People talk about the beauty of the spring, but I can't see it. The trees are brown and bare, slimy with rain. Some are crawling with new purple hairs. And the buds are bulging like tumorous acne, and I can tell that something wet, and soft, and cold, and misshapen is about to be born.
And I am turning into a vampire. — M T Anderson

Spring: trees flying up to their birds — Paul Celan

It was one of those winter days that suddenly dream of spring, when the sky is blue and soft and clear, and the wind has dropped its voice and whispers instead of screaming, and the sun is out and the trees look surprised, and over everything there is the faintest, palest tint of green. — Shirley Jackson

Sugaring season is the season when you tap the trees for sugar that turns into maple syrup. I've married someone from Vermont, so it's an expression I kept hearing, and I'm like, 'What is that? That's just so beautiful.' I like the idea it's the very, very first murmurings of spring. — Beth Orton

From all these trees, in the salads, the soup, everywhere, cherry blossoms fall. — Matsuo Basho

Saturday morning was come, and all the summer world was bright and fresh, and brimming with life. There was a song in every heart; and if the heart was young, the music issued at the lips. There was cheer in every face and a spring in every step. The locust-trees were in bloom, and the fragrance of the blossoms filled the air. Cardiff Hill, beyond the village and above, it was green with vegetation, and it lay just far enough away to seem a Delectable Land, dreamy, reposeful, and inviting. — Mark Twain

When she went out into the dark kitchen to fix her plants for the night, she used to stand by the window and look out at the white fields, or watch the currents of snow whirling over the orchard. She seemed to feel the weight of all the snow that lay down there. The branches had become so hard that they wounded your hand if you but tried to break a twig. And yet, down under the frozen crusts, at the roots of the trees, the secret of life was still safe, warm as the blood in one's heart; and the spring would come again! Oh, it would come again! — Willa Cather

In wolf form, Ryan stalked through the woods, his hunger - and anger - mounting each second that passed. He'd just found out from Ana that Teresa had gone riding out to check the fence lines.
By herself....
Panic hummed through him as he raced through a small patch of trees, lush and green now that it was spring. — Katie Reus

Spring flew swiftly by, and summer came; and if the village had been beautiful at first, it was now in the full glow and luxuriance of its richness. The great trees, which had looked shrunken and bare in the earlier months, had now burst into strong life and health; and stretching forth their green arms over the thirsty ground, converted open and naked spots into choice nooks, where was a deep and pleasant shade from which to look upon the wide prospect, steeped in sunshine, which lay stretched out beyond. The earth had donned her mantle of brightest green; and shed her richest perfumes abroad. It was the prime and vigour of the year; all things were glad and flourishing. — Charles Dickens

The Barks of Trees are best gathered in the Spring, if it be of great Trees, as Oaks or the like, because then they come easiest off, and so you may dry them if you please, but indeed your best way is to gather all Barks only for present use. — Nicholas Culpeper

Yeah, I get it. I'll be cool as a well digger's ass."
He jumped when the front door slammed shut, the harsh bang echoing around the trees.
Mitch shook his head. "That well digger must be working in a hot spring. — Hunter Shea

We saw the strong trees struggle and their plumes do down, The poplar bend and whip back till it split to fall, The elm tear up at the root and topple like a crown, The pine crack at the base - we had to watch them all. The ash, the lovely cedar. We had to watch them fall. They went so softly under the loud flails of air, Before that fury they went down like feathers, With all the hundred springs that flowered in their hair, and all the years, endured in all the weathers - To fall as if they were nothing, as if they were feathers. — May Sarton

One day it had rained before sunrise, and a soft spring wind had been blowing ever since, a soothing and persuading wind, that seemed to draw out the buds from the secret places of the dry twigs, and whisper to the roots of the rose-trees that their flowers would be wanted by and by. — George MacDonald

I want to do with you what spring does with cherry trees. — Pablo Neruda

A tree can be tempted out of its winter dormancy by a few hours of southerly sun - the readiness to believe in spring is stronger than sleep or sanity. — Amy Leach

Jacob wrote that the true poet 'is like a man who is happy anywhere, in endless measure, if he is allowed to look at leaves and grass, to see the sun rise and set. The false poet travels abroad in strange countries and hopes to be uplifted by the mountains of Switzerland, the sky and sea of Italy. He comes to them and is dissatisfied. He is not as happy as the man who stays at home and sees the apple trees flower in spring, and hears the small birds singing among the branches — Jacob Grimm

I'm thinking that it will be autumn soon," she said, lifting her gaze to his. "Autumn is my absolute favorite season. Spring is overrated. It's soggy and the trees are still bare from winter. Winter drags on and on, and summer is nice, but it's all the same. Autumn is different. I mean, is there any perfume in the world that can compare with the smell of burning leaves?" she asked with an engaging smile. Matt thought she smelled a hell of a lot better than burning leaves, but he let her continue. "Autumn - is thexincgitsinagre
changing. It's like dusk." "Dusk?"
"Dusk is my favorite time of day, for the same reason. When I was young, I used to walk down our driveway at dusk in the summer and stand at the fence, watching all the cars going by with their headlights on. Everyone had a place to go, something to do. The night was just beginning ... " She trailed off in embarrassment. "That must sound incredibly silly."
"It sounds incredibly lonely. — Judith McNaught

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough. — A.E. Housman

Here I find the true nature of the tree - not in the bulk of its shape but in the way its form alters my vision of the world. — Stefanie Brook Trout

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

I have an awful feeling I'm supposed to know, and that this is some kind of treat. I don't think it's my birthday, but perhaps an anniversary. Patrick's death? It would be just like Helen to remember and make it a "special occasion." But I can see from the bare trees out on the street that it's the wrong time of year. Patrick died in the spring. — Emma Healey

Oh! that we two were Maying
Down the stream of the soft spring breeze;
Like children with violets playing,
In the shade of the whispering trees. — Charles Kingsley

Fine fruit is the flower of commodities. It is the most perfect union of the useful and the beautiful that the earth knows. Trees full of soft foliage; blossoms fresh with spring bounty; and, finally, fruit, rich, bloom-dusted, melting, and luscious. — Andrew Jackson Downing

When the long, varnished buds of beech Point out beyond their reach, And tanned by summer suns Leaves of bright bryony turn bronze, And gossamer floats bright and wet From trees that are their own sunset, Spring, summer, autumn I come here, And what is there to fear? And yet I never lose the feeling That someone else behind is stealing Or else in front has disappeared; Though nothing I have seen or heard, Makes me still walk beneath these boughs With cautious step as in a haunted house. — Andrew Young

Orpheus with his lute made trees, And the mountain tops that freeze, Bow themselves, when he did sing; To his music, plants and flowers Ever sprung; as sun and showers There had made a lasting spring. Every thing that heard him play, Even the billows of the sea, Hung their heads, and then lay by. In sweet music is such art, Killing care and grief of heart Fall asleep, or hearing, die. — William Shakespeare

But suppose the endlessly dead were to
wake in us some emblem:
they might point to the catkins hanging
from the empty hazel trees, or direct
us to the rain
descending on black earth in early
spring.
And we, who always think of happiness
rising, would feel the emotion
that almost baffles us
when a happy thing falls. — Rainer Maria Rilke

A Poem does not grow by jerks. As trees in Spring produce a new ring of tissue, so does every poet put forth a fresh outlay of stuff at the same season. — Wilfred Owen

They were ghosts, I suppose, the procession of the dead. They weren't pale kings and pale maidens, they were work-worn men and women - perfectly ordinary people, except for being dead. You'd never mistake them for living people. You couldn't quite see through them, but they were even more drained of colour than everything else, and they weren't quite as solid as they ought to be. One of the men I recognised. He had been sitting in Fedw Hir near Grampar making blubbing sounds with his mouth. Now he strode along easily with a spring in his step. His face was grave and composed, he was a man with dignity and purpose. He bent and picked up one of my oak leaves from the path and offered it like a ticket at the cinema as he passed between the two trees. I didn't see anyone take it. I couldn't see into the darkness at all. — Jo Walton

And how do trees register that the warmer days are because of spring and not late summer? The appropriate reaction is triggered by a combination of day length and temperature. Rising temperatures mean it's spring. Falling temperatures mean it's fall. Trees are aware of that as well. And that's why species such as oaks or beeches, which are native to the Northern Hemisphere, adapt to reversed cycles in the Southern Hemisphere if they are exported to New Zealand and planted there. And what this proves as well, by the way, is that trees must have a memory. How else could they inwardly compare day lengths or count warm days? — Peter Wohlleben

I am going to try to pay attention to the spring. I am going to look around at all the flowers, and look up at the hectic trees. I am going to close my eyes and listen. — Anne Lamott

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.
Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees. — Robert Frost

The streams buck like rams in a tent / whips crack and from the hills come the crookedly combed /shadows of the shepherds. /black eggs and fools' bells fall from the trees. / thunder drums and kettledrums beat upon the ears of the donkeys. / wings brush against flowers. / fountains spring up in the eyes of the wild boar. — Hans Arp

If a man cannot enjoy the return of spring, why should he be happy in a labour-saving Utopia? ... I think that by retaining one's childhood love of such things as trees, fishes, butterflies and ... toads, one makes a peaceful and decent future a little more probable. — George Orwell

And so they lived for many a long year, as happy and lighthearted as the birds in the trees and the flowers on the hill in spring. — Jessica Day George

Pedaling down the maple lined drive, quicksilver temper ebbed, her resilient spirits were lifted with the beauty of the day. The valley was stirring with life. Small clusters of fragile violets and red clover dotted the rolling meadows. Lines of fresh laundry waved in the early breeze. The boundary of mountains was tooped by a winter's coat, not yet the soft, lush green it would be in a month's time, but patched with stark black trees and the intermittent color of pines. Clouds scudded thin and white across the sky, chased by the teasing wind which whispered of spring and fresh blossoms. — Nora Roberts

The spring came to paint the leaves back upon the trees. — Mark Lawrence

Like leaves on trees the race of man is found,- Now green in youth, now withering on the ground; Another race the following spring supplies: They fall successive, and successive rise. — Homer

The sky is stained pink and purple, and the shadows are thick, stark brush strokes on the ground. But the air is still warm, and several trees are crowned with tiny green leaves.
I like seeing the Wilds this way: skinny, naked, not yet clothed in spring. But reaching, too, grasping and growing, full of want and a thirst for sun that gets slaked a little bit more every day. Soon the Wilds will explode, drunk and vibrant. — Lauren Oliver

On increasingly warm nice days I liked to sit toward noon on the bench encircling the cherry tree and look at the bare trees, the freshly plowed fields, the green strips of winter planting, the meadows that were already sprouting, and through the fragrance which swells out of the ground with the advent of spring contemplate the mountains, gleaming with the colossal quantities of snow still on them. — Adalbert Stifter

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

SEASONS OF LIFE

Sometimes I fall
And feel myself slowly wilt and die,
But then I suddenly spring back on my feet
To go play in the sun outside.
I am no different than the weather,
The planets or the trees;
For there do not always have to be reasons
For the seasons turning inside of me.
The magnetism that swirls
In the sky, land, and sea
Are the exact same currents found twirling
In the electric ocean within me.
I am a moving vessel of energy.
And if my emotions do not
Flow up, down,
Within and around,
Then I am not alive. — Suzy Kassem

It is noticeable how intuitively in age we go back with strange fondness to all that is fresh in the earliest dawn of youth. If we never cared for little children before, we delight to see them roll in the grass over which we hobble on crutches. The grandsire turns wearily from his middle-aged, careworn son, to listen with infant laugh to the prattle of an infant grandchild. It is the old who plant young trees; it is the old who are most saddened by the autumn; and feel most delight in the returning spring. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

When we were in the woods beyond Gowbarrow Park we saw a few daffodils close to the waterside. But as we went along there were more and yet more and at last under the boughs of the trees, we saw that there was a long belt of them along the shore, about the breadth of a county turnpike toad. I never saw daffodils so beautiful. They grew about the mossy stones about and about them, some rested their heads upon these stones as on a pillow for weariness and the rest tossed and reeled and danced and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them over the lake. — Dorothy Wordsworth

It was rainy, trees leafing out, spring deepening into summer; and the forlorn cry of horns on the street, the dank smell of the wet pavement had an electricity about it, a sense of crowds and static, lonely secretaries and fat guys with bags of carry-out, everywhere the ungainly sadness of creatures pushing and struggling to live. — Donna Tartt

The snow has not yet left the earth, but spring is already asking to enter your heart. If you have ever recovered from a serious illness, you will be familiar with the blessed state when you are in a delicious state of anticipation, and are liable to smile without any obvious reason. Evidently that is what nature is experiencing just now. The ground is cold, mud and snow squelches under foot, but how cheerful, gentle and inviting everything is! The air is so clear and transparent that if you were to climb to the top of the pigeon loft or the bell tower, you feel you might actually see the whole universe from end to end. The sun is shining brightly, and its playful, beaming rays are bathing in the puddles along with the sparrows. The river is swelling and darkening; it has already woken up and very soon will begin to roar. The trees are bare, but they are already living and breathing. — Anton Chekhov

All things are recreated, and the flame Of consentaneous love inspires all life. The fertile bosom of the earth gives suck To myriads, who still grow beneath her care, Rewarding her with their pure perfectness; The balmy breathings of the wind inhale Her virtues and diffuse them all abroad; Health floats amid the gentle atmosphere, Glows in the fruits and mantles on the stream; No storms deform the beaming brow of heaven, Nor scatter in the freshness of its pride The foliage of the ever-verdant trees; But fruits are ever ripe, flowers ever fair, And autumn proudly bears her matron grace, Kindling a flush on the fair cheek of spring, Whose virgin bloom beneath the ruddy fruit Reflects its tint and blushes into love. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

He had never liked October. Ever since he had first lay in the autumn leaves before his grandmother's house many years ago and heard the wind and saw the empty trees. It had made him cry, without a reason. And a little of that sadness returned each year to him. It always went away with spring.
But, it was a little different tonight. There was a feeling of autumn coming to last a million years.
There would be no spring. ("The October Game") — Ray Bradbury

April was just beginning, and after the warm spring day it turned cooler, slightly frosty, and a breath of spring could be felt in the soft, cold air. The road from the convent to town was sandy, they had to go at a walking pace; and on both sides of the carriage, in the bright, still moonlight, pilgrims trudged over the sand. And everyone was silent, deep in thought, everything around was welcoming, young, so near - the trees, the sky, even the moon - and one wanted to think it would always be so. — Anton Chekhov

February
Boris Pasternak
It's February. Get ink. Weep.
Write the heart out about it, sing
Another song of February
While raucous slush burns black with spring.
Six grivnas* for a buggy ride
Past booming bells, on screaming gears,
Out to a place where drizzles fall
Louder than any ink or tears
Where like a flock of charcoal pears,
A thousand blackbirds, ripped awry
From trees to puddles, knock dry grief
Into the deep end of the eye.
A thaw patch blackens underfoot.
The wind is gutted with a scream.
True verses are the most haphazard,
Rhyming the heart out on a theme.
*Grivna: a unit of currency. — Boris Pasternak

In snowbound, voiceless, mountain depths, to herald spring, pine trees sound in tune. — Princess Shikishi

Did I live the spring I'd sought?
It's true in joy, I walked along,
took part in dance,
and sang the song.
and never tried to bind an hour
to my borrowed garden bower;
nor did I once entreat
a day to slumber at my feet.
Yet days aren't lulled by lyric song,
like morning birds they pass along,
o'er crests of trees, to none belong;
o'er crests of trees of drying dew,
their larking flight, my hands, eschew
Thus I'll say it once and true ...
From all that I saw,
and everywhere I wandered,
I learned that time cannot be spent,
It only can be squandered. — Roman Payne

Ode to Love
Lin Huiyin

I think you are the April of this world,
Sure, you are the April of this world.
Your laughter has lit up all the wind,
So gently mingling with the spring.

You are the clouds in early spring,
The dusk wind blows up and down.
And the stars blink now and then,
Fine rain drops down amid the flowers.

So gentle and graceful,
You are crowned with garlands.
So sublime and innocent,
You are a full moon over each evening.

The snow melts, with that light yellow,
You look like the first budding green.
You are the soft joy of white lotus
Rising up in your fancy dreamland.

You're the blooming flowers over the trees,
You're a swallow twittering between the beams;
Full of love, full of warm hope,
You are the spring of this world! — Lin Huiyin

Syme felt moved to spring up and leap over the balcony. When the President's eyes were on him he felt as if he were made of glass. He had hardly the shred of a doubt that in some silent and extraordinary way Sunday had found out that he was a spy. He looked over the edge of the balcony, and saw a policeman, standing abstractedly just beneath, staring at the bright railings and the sunlit trees. — G.K. Chesterton

Every spring, this country will be reminded of the Lady from Texas. As trees bloom and flowers carpet our nation's capital, Lady Bird Johnson will be remembered. Only Lady Bird Johnson could, with her vision of a beautiful America, lay claim to spring as her memorial. — David Mixner

When we complain of having to do the same thing over and over, let us remember that God does not send new trees, strange flowers and different grasses every year. When the spring winds blow, they blow in the same way. In the same places the same dear blossoms lift up the same sweet faces, yet they never weary us. When it rains, it rains as it always has. Even so would the same tasks which fill our daily lives put on new meanings if we wrought them in the spirit of renewal from within
a spirit of growth and beauty. — Helen Keller

When I think back about my immediate reaction to that redheads girl, it seems to spring from an appreciation of natural beauty. I mean the heart pleasure you get from looking at speckled leaves or the palimpsested bark of plane trees in Provence. There was something richly appealing to her color combination, the ginger snaps floating in the milk-white skin, the golden highlights in the strawberry hair. it was like autumn, looking at her. It was like driving up north to see the colors. — Jeffrey Eugenides

Eustace remembered a day like this one: spring on the cusp of summer, the earth unclenching its fist, thick green leaves, rich with fragrance, fattening the trees. A — Justin Cronin

Think of the sound you make when you let go after holding your breath for a very, very long time. Think of the gladdest sound you know: the sound of dawn on the first day of spring break, the sound of a bottle of Coke opening, the sound of a crowd cheering in your ears because you're coming down to the last part of a race
and you're ahead. Think of the sound of water over stones in a cold stream, and the sound of wind through green trees on a late May afternoon in Central Park. Think of the sound of a bus coming into the station carrying someone you love.
Then put all those together. — Gary D. Schmidt

Spring. Blooms break forth from the startled earth. The sky laughs. The trees, abashed, dress themselves in verdant green. And the heavens are lush with starts. Redeem the time, the stars sing down. Redeem the dream.
And the boy waking in the land of broken rocks, the dry land wet with spring rain, waking in the place where two dreams cross
the dream where seeds grow into trees of gold and the dream of the box that he cannot open. — Rick Yancey

Spring beckons! All things to the call respond; the trees are leaving and cashiers abscond. — Ambrose Bierce

Snowstorms may yet whiten fields and gardens, high winds may howl about the trees and chimneys, but the little blue heralds persistently proclaim from the orchard and the garden that the spring procession has begun to move. — Neltje Blanchan

All the world over we are very conscious of the trees in spring, and watch with delight how the network of twigs on the wych-elms is becoming spangled with tiny puce flowers, like little beetles caught in a spider's web, and how little lemon-colored buds are studding the thorn. While as to the long red-gold buds of the horse-chestnuts - they come bursting out with a sort of a visual bang. And now the beech is hatching its tiny perfectly-formed leaves — Hope Mirrlees

The year is ended, and it only adds to my age;
Spring has come, but I must take leave of my home.
Alas, that the trees in this eastern garden,
Without me, will still bear flowers. — Su Ting

It was very sad under the trees. Although spring was well advanced, in the deep shade there was nothing but death-rotten leaves, gray and white fungi, and over everything a funeral hush. — Nathanael West

In our part of the country, spring passes quickly. If you haven't been out for five days, you find the trees in bud. If you don't see the trees for another five days, you discover that they've put out leaves. In another five days, they're so green you wouldn't recognize them. It makes you wonder: Can these be the same trees I saw a few days before? And you answer yourself: Of course they are. That's how fast spring goes by. You can almost see it. From far away it comes racing toward you. And when it reaches you it whispers in your ear, 'I'm here,' and then runs swiftly on.
Spring - what a rush it's in. Every place seems to be urging it to come. If it delays its arrival a bit, the sunlight fades and the earth turns to stone. Trees especially can't endure any delay. Let spring dally even briefly on the way, and many lives are lost. ("Spring In A Small Town") — Xiao Hong

I will bring you flowers from the mountains, bluebells,
dark hazels, and rustic baskets of kisses.
I want to do with you
what spring does with the cherry trees. — Pablo Neruda

As the spring comes on, and the densening outlines of the elm give daily a new design for a Grecian urn, - its hue, first brown with blossoms, then emerald with leaves, - we appreciate the vanishing beauty of the bare boughs. In our favored temperate zone, the trees denude themselves each year, like the goddesses before Paris, that we may see which unadorned loveliness is the fairest. — Thomas Wentworth Higginson

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

A street turned off at right angles, descending, and became a dirt road. On either hand the land dropped more sharply; a broad flat dotted with small cabins whose weathered roofs were on a level with the crown of the road. They were set in small grassless plots littered with broken things, bricks, planks, crockery, things of a once utilitarian value. What growth there was consisted of rank weeds and the trees were mulberries and locusts and sycamores
trees that partook also of the foul desiccation which surrounded the houses; trees whose very burgeoning seemed to be the sad and stubborn remnant of September, as if even spring had passed them by, leaving them to feed upon the rich and unmistakable smell of negroes in which they grew. — William Faulkner

WANT TO DO WITH YOU WHAT SPRING DOES WITH THE CHERRY TREES." Pablo Neruda, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair * — Chance Carter

After the war of course it will be like the start of spring, which is always so brilliantly sudden. The leaves will burst back onto the trees and close the gaps between the branches and we shall be startled - shan't we? - s we are startled at the end of every winter. We shall think: oh, I had quite forgotten there were three livable seasons. — Chris Cleave

Ahead, twin rows of crape myrtles dot the road. They're losing their flowers. Purple petals ring the trunks, fallen mementos of a past bloom like photos from college years. But unlike people, trees flower again in the spring; they age in great looping circles. We ride a roller coaster once around, shuddering up clacking tracks and then screaming our fool heads off all the way down. — Hugh Howey

Green trees against the sky in the spring rain while the sky set off the spring trees in the obscuration. Red flowers dot the land in the breeze's chase while the land colored up in red after the kiss. — Gayle Forman

I don't know where you are these days, what's broken down and what's beautiful in your life this season. I don't know if this is a season of sweetness or one of sadness. But I'm learning that neither last forever. There will, I'm sure, be something that invades this current loveliness. That's how life is. It won't be sweet forever. But it won't be bitter forever either. If everywhere you look these days, it's wintery, desolate, lonely, practice believing in springtime. It always, always comes, even though on days like today it's nearly impossible to imagine, ground frozen, trees bare and spiky. New life will spring from this same ground. This season will end, and something entirely new will follow it. — Shauna Niequist

Of the infinite variety of fruits which spring from the bosom of the earth, the trees of the wood are the greatest in dignity. — Susan Fenimore Cooper

We'd known each other over a very short period of time. He left France in June of 1964, and I'm writing this in April 1992. I never received word from him and I don't know if he's dead or alive. The memory of him had remained dormant, but now it has suddenly come flooding back this early spring of 1992. Is it because I came across the picture of my girlfriend and me, on the back of which a blue stamp says Photo by Jansen. All rights reserved? Or for the simple reason that every spring looks the same? Today the air was light, the buds had burst on the trees in the gardens of the Observatoire, and the month of April 1992 merged by an effect of superimposition with the month of April 1964. — Patrick Modiano