We had an absolutely gorgeous weekend here in West Michigan–and that’s not simply because of the Festival of Faith and Writing! No, the weather–in contrast to the snow we’d had only a little while before–shouted “spring” at every turn.
In literature, spring is supposed to be all new life and bounding baby animals. But of course, the best poets complicate that notion. T.S. Eliot with his “cruelest month” of April, for example. And as I’ve been planning for next term (in their great wisdom, Congress has decided that professors need to order textbooks incredibly early) and the class I’m going to teach in the British Romantics, I was reminded of William Wordsworth’s thoughtful “Lines Written in Early Spring.” If we can overlook his use of “man” for “humanity,” we find a poem that encourages us to weigh the joy of spring–particularly the pleasures of God’s good creation–against our own actions and the “grie[f]” that brings. Perhaps worth a read this morning.
Lines Written in Early Spring
