“It was such a spring day as breathes into a man an ineffable yearning, a painful sweetness, a longing that makes him stand motionless, looking at the leaves or grass, and fling out his arms to embrace he knows not what.”
-John Galsworthy, The Forsyte Saga
Spring is a contemplative time. New life springing forth all around us, a rebirth, a new beginning. This spring I have rejoiced the birth of my darling little nephew, and have been saddened by the loss of my dear Grandpa Smith. It’s been quite strange thinking about life in a grander perspective. The happiness of new life, the beauty of blossoms in spring, and seeing ruins of a past time, the sadness of saying goodbye. Time never stops and to be alive is to love.
Life is beautiful. Life is painful. Life is precious.
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
-Søren Kierkegaard
“Spring drew on…and a greenness grew over those brown beds, which, freshening daily, suggested the thought that Hope traversed them at night, and left each morning brighter traces of her steps.”
-Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
“The beautiful spring came; and when Nature resumes her loveliness, the human soul is apt to revive also.”
-Harriet Ann Jacobs
“sweet spring is your
time is my time is our
time for springtime is lovetime
and viva sweet love”
-E.E. Cummings
“It is spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart.”
-Rainer Maria Rilke
“It is so small a thing to have enjoyed the sun,
to have lived light in the spring,
to have loved, to have thought, to have done.”
-Matthew Arnold
“Death takes us by surprise,
And stays our hurrying feet;
The great design unfinished lies,
Our lives are incomplete
But in the dark unknown,
Perfect their circles seem,
Even as a bridge’s arch of stone
Is rounded in the stream.
Alike are life and death,
When life in death survives,
And the uninterrupted breath
Inspires a thousand lives.
Were a star quenched on high,
For ages would its light,
Still traveling downward from the sky,
Shine on our mortal sight.
So when a great man dies,
For years beyond our ken,
The light he leaves behind him lies
Upon the paths of men.”
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
(For part two click here to read Past and Present: Loss and Love)
