Of all the seasons, although he writes sympathetically of every one, Shakespeare best loved the spring. He is not exceptional in that, for it is the season of hope and promise, when the risen sap in the trees makes the leaves unfold and the buds unsheath their beauties, when beasts and birds respond to the climatic change and hibernating small creatures and insects awake from their long sleep; and no less than the trees and plants, the animals and insects, all mankind finds a renewal of life.
“It was a lover and his lass,
With a hey and a ho, and a hey nonino,
That o’er the green cornfield did pass
In the spring-time, the only merry ring-time,
When birds do sing, hey ding-a-ding
Sweet lovers love the spring.”
Thus the pages sung in the Forest of Arden; and Shakespeare, be sure, put something of himself into the character of Autolycus the pedlar, who after all was a man of better observation, judging by his song, than rogues of his sort commonly be—
“When daffodils begin to peer,—
With hey! the doxy over the dale,—
Why, then comes in the sweet o’ the year;
For the red blood reigns in the winter’s pale.The white sheet bleaching on the hedge,—
With hey! the sweet birds, O how they sing!—
Doth set my pugging tooth on edge;
For a quart of ale is a dish for a king.The lark that tirra-lirra chants,—
With hey! with hey! the thrush and the jay:—
Are summer songs for me and my aunts,
While we lie tumbling in the hay.”
Shakespeare, we like to think, had the tenderest feeling for those same daffodils with which Autolycus begins his song; for in lines that are among the most beautiful he ever wrote, he makes Perdita speak of—
“Daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty.”
Here we find, not for once only, Shakespeare and that other sweet singer, Herrick, curiously in sympathy—
“Sweet daffodils, we weep to see
You haste away so soon.”
He does not care so ardently for the rose, although he seems, rather indifferently it is true, to admit that it is the queen of flowers. But it delays until summer is upon us. It does not dare with the daffodil.
He returns again and again to the more idyllic simple flowers of nature that the gardener takes no account of. He paints the cowslips in a few words of close observation. They are Queen Mab’s pensioners—