Spring.
The beauties of the seasons are a constant theme with their discoverers—the poets. Spring, as the reproductive source of “light and life and love,” has the preeminence with these children of nature. The authors of “The Forest Minstrel and other poems,” William and Mary Howitt, have high claims upon reflective and imaginative minds, in return for the truth and beauty contained in an elegant volume, which cultivates the moral sense, and infuses a devotional spirit, through exquisite description and just application. The writers have traversed “woods and wilds, and fields, and lanes, with a curious and delighted eye,” and “written not for the sake of writing,” but for the indulgence of their overflowing feelings. They are “members of the Society of Friends,” and those who are accustomed to regard individuals of that community as necessarily incapable of poetical impression, will be pleased by reading from Mr. Howitt’s “Epistle Dedicatory” what he says of his own verses, and of his helpmate in the work:—
And now ’tis spring, and bards are gathering flowers;
So I have cull’d you these, and with them sent
The gleanings of a nymph whom some few hours
Ago I met with—some few years I meant—
Gathering “true-love” amongst the wild-wood bowers;
You’ll find some buds all with this posy blent,
If that ye know them, which some lady fair
Viewing, may haply prize, for they are wond’rous rare.
Artists have seldom represented friends—“of the Society of Friends,”—with poetical feeling. Mr. Howitt’s sketch of himself, and her whom he found gathering “true-love,” though they were not clad perhaps “as worldlings are,” would inspire a painter, whose art could be roused by the pen, to a charming picture of youthful affection. The habit of some of the young men, in the peaceable community, maintains its character, without that extremity of the fashion of being out of fashion, which marks the wearer as remarkably formal; while the young females of the society, still preserving the distinction prescribed by discipline, dress more attractively, to the cultivated eye, than a multitude of the sex who study variety of costume. Such lovers, pictured as they are imagined from Mr. Howitt’s lines, would grace a landscape, enfoliated from other stanzas in the same poem, which raise the fondest recollections of the pleasures of boyhood in spring.
Then did I gather, with a keen delight,
All changes of the seasons, and their signs:
Then did I speed forth, at the first glad sight
Of the coy spring—of spring that archly shines
Out for a day—then goes—and then more bright
Comes laughing forth, like a gay lass that lines
A dark lash with a ray that beams and burns,
And scatters hopes and doubts, and smiles and frowns, by turns.
On a sweet, shining morning thus sent out,
It seem’d what man was made for, to look round
And trace the full brook, that, with clamorous route,
O’er fallen trees, and roots black curling, wound
Through glens, with wild brakes scatter’d all about;
Where not a leaf or green blade yet was found
Springing to hide the red fern of last year,
And hemlock’s broken stems, and rustling rank grass sere.
But hazel catkins, and the bursting buds
Of the fresh willow, whisper’d “spring is coming;”
And bullfinches forth flitting from the woods,
With their rich silver voices; and the humming
Of a new waken’d bee that pass’d; and the broods
Of ever dancing gnats, again consuming,
In pleasant sun-light, their re-given time;
And the germs swelling in the red shoots of the lime.
All these were tell-tales of far brighter hours,
That had been, and again were on their way;
The breaking forth of green things, and of flowers,
From the earth’s breast; from bank and quickening spray
Dews, buds, and blossoms; and in woodland bowers,
Fragrant and fresh, full many a sweet bird’s lay,
Sending abroad, from the exultant spring,
To every living heart a gladsome welcoming.
Howitt.
[117] Vol. i. p. 407.