Classic Spring Poems

Spring and all its flowers
by Hafiz
(1320 - 1389) Timeline

English version by
Homayun Taba & Marguerite Theophil


Spring and all its flowers
now joyously break their vow of silence.
It is time for celebration, not for lying low;
You too - weed out those roots of sadness from your heart.

The Sabaa wind arrives;
and in deep resonance, the flower
passionately rips open its garments,
thrusting itself from itself.

The Way of Truth, learn from the clarity of water,
Learn freedom from the spreading grass.

Pay close attention to the artistry of the Sabaa wind,
that wafts in pollen from afar,
And ripples the beautiful tresses
of the fields of hyacinth flowers.

From the privacy of the harem, the virgin bud slips out,
revealing herself under the morning star,
branding your heart and your faith
with beauty.

And frenzied bulbul flies madly out of the House of Sadness
to unite with the flowers;
its love-crazed cry like a thousand-trumpet blast.

Hafez says, and the experienced old ones concur:

All you really need
is to tell those Stories
of the Fair Ones and the Goblet of Wine.

All things shall melt and turn into songs when Spring comes. Even the stars, the vast snowflakes that fall slowly upon the larger fields, shall melt into singing streams. When the sun of His face shall arise above the wider horizon, then what frozen symmetry would not turn into liquid melody?

Kahlil Gibran

Half an hour in a spring evening is worth a thousand gold pieces.

Japanese Proverb

A Prayer in Spring


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.

And make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard,
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid air stands still.

For this is love and nothing else is love,
The which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends He will,
But which it only needs that we fulfil.

Robert Frost (1915)

It seems as if
This must be the end of it-
So much spring snow

Issa (1762-1826

“Sitting quietly, doing nothing, Spring comes, and the grass grows, by itself.”
― Bashō

"April's air stirs in
Willow-leaves...a butterfly
Floats and balances”
― Bashō,

The two plum trees --
I love their blooming!
One early, one later.

Buson

In the spring sea
Waves undulating and undulating
All day long.

Buson

Coming back --
So many pathways
Through the spring grass.

Buson

You whispered in my ears like early spring:
"I am the call of Love,
can you hear me in the full grasses,
in the scented winds,
it is I who makes the garden smile."

Rumi
*******

Mouthpainting by Elodie Cazes

...From the spring of love you bring back
life to my ailing heart.
The song of the awakened earth, the seasons,
the changing Moons,
all this fuss you make is glorious,
Creation bows at your feet.

Rumi
*******

...Today
amid the scent
of new mango blossoms,

amid the rustling notes
of fresh stems bursting forth,

under the nectar- sprinkled moon rays
in the sky
in tearful delight,

by whos touch am I delighted
in this fragrant-laden agitated breeze?

Today spring is awake at the door,
in your veiled, shy life
please don't frustrate her.

Open up the petals of your heart today...

Rabindranath Tagore
**********************

A Spring Song

Old Mother Earth woke up from her sleep,
and found she was cold and bare;
the winter was over, the spring was near,
and she had not a dress to wear.
"Alas!" she sighed, with great dismay.
"oh, where shall I get my clothes?
There's not a place to buy a suit,
and a dressmaker no one knows."

"I'll make you a dress," said the spring grass,
just looking above the ground,
"a dress of green of the lovliest sheen,
to cover you all around."
"And we," said the dandelions gay,
"will dot it with yellow bright."
"I'll make it a fringe," said forget-me -not,
"of blue, very soft and light."

"We'll embroider the front," said the violets,
"with a lovely purple hue!"
"And we," said the roses, "will make you a crown
of red , jeweled over the dew."
"And we'll be your gems," said the voice from the shade,
where the ladies' eardrops live-
"orange is the color for any queen
and the best we have to give."

Old Mother Earth was thankful and glad,
as she put on her dress so gay;
and that is the reason, my little ones,
she is looking so lovely today.

Unknown poet

Vicky, you have made your images blend in with the words of the poem. This is wonderful!


Spring

By William Shakespeare 1564–1616

When daisies pied and violets blue
And lady-smocks all silver-white
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue
Do paint the meadows with delight,
The cuckoo then, on every tree,
Mocks married men; for thus sings he,
Cuckoo;
Cuckoo, cuckoo: Oh word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear!


When shepherds pipe on oaten straws,
And merry larks are plowmen’s clocks,
When turtles tread, and rooks, and daws,
And maidens bleach their summer smocks,
The cuckoo then, on every tree,
Mocks married men; for thus sings he,
Cuckoo;
Cuckoo, cuckoo: Oh word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear!

For winter's rains and ruins are over,
And all the season of snows and sins;
The days dividing lover and lover,
The light that loses, the night that wins;
And time remembered is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
And in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom the spring begins.

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909)
Atalanta in Calydon (1865)

Spring air -
woven moon
and plum scent.

Basho (c 1680)

All things shall melt and turn into songs when Spring comes.
Even the stars, the vast snowflakes that fall slowly upon the larger fields, shall melt into singing streams...

Kahlil Gibran

And he looked upon that one, and there was in his voice a sound like a star singing, and he said: "In your waking dream, when you are hushed and listening to your deeper self, your thoughts, like snowflakes, fall and flutter and garment all the sounds of your spaces with white silence.
'And what are weaking dreams but clouds that bud and blossom on the sky-tree of your heart? And what are your thoughts but the petals which the winds of your heart scatter upon the hills and its fields....

Kahlil Gibran

Where Spring, the lord of the seasons, reigneth, there the Unstruck Music sounds of itself, there the streams of light flow in all directions;
Few are the men who can cross to that shore!
There, where millions of Krishnas stand with hands folded,
Where millions of Vishnus bow their heads,
Where millions of Brahmas are reading the Vedas,
Where millions of Shivas are lost in contemplation.
Where millions of Indras dwell in the sky,
Where the demi-gods and the munis are outnumbered,
Where millions of Saraswatis, Goddess of Music, play on the vina-
There is my Lord self-revealed; and
the scent of sandal and flowers dwells in those deeps.

Songs of Kabir,
translated by Rabindranath Tagore