Spring is the time when classic literature is at its best. And we are fortunate enough to be able to enjoy what the literary giants have left to us regarding the season. Their prose is, let’s say, more than pretty. As Anne said in L.M. Montgomery’s “Anne of Green Gables”: “Pretty? Oh, pretty doesn’t seem the right word to use. Nor beautiful, either. They don’t go far enough. Oh, it was wonderful—wonderful.”
As I tracked down the following passages, they brought me back to the first time I encountered them and the pleasure of those moments. May these take you, too, back to your first joy of discovering wonderful prose, wonderful scenery, and wonderful sentiments.
Frances Hodgson Burnett, ‘The Secret Garden’
“You see—you see,“ she panted, ”if no one knows but ourselves—if there was a door, hidden somewhere under the ivy—if there was—and we could find it; and if we could slip through it together and shut it behind us, and no one knew any one was inside and we called it our garden and pretended that—that we were missel thrushes and it was our nest, and if we played there almost every day and dug and planted seeds and made it all come alive—”“Is it dead?” he interrupted her.
“It soon will be if no one cares for it,” she went on. “The bulbs will live but the roses—”
He stopped her again as excited as she was herself.
“What are bulbs?” he put in quickly.
“They are daffodils and lilies and snowdrops. They are working in the earth now—pushing up pale green points because the spring is coming.”
“Is the spring coming?” he said. “What is it like? You don’t see it in rooms if you are ill.”
Anton Chekhov, ‘The Exclamation Mark’
“The snow has not yet left the earth, but spring is already asking to enter your heart. If you have ever recovered from a serious illness, you will be familiar with the blessed state when you are in a delicious state of anticipation, and are liable to smile without any obvious reason. Evidently that is what nature is experiencing just now. The ground is cold, mud and snow squelches under foot, but how cheerful, gentle and inviting everything is! The air is so clear and transparent that if you were to climb to the top of the pigeon loft or the bell tower, you feel you might actually see the whole universe from end to end. The sun is shining brightly, and its playful, beaming rays are bathing in the puddles along with the sparrows. The river is swelling and darkening; it has already woken up and very soon will begin to roar. The trees are bare, but they are already living and breathing.”Charlotte Brontë, ‘Jane Eyre’
“Spring drew on: she was indeed already come; the frosts of winter had ceased; its snows were melted, its cutting winds ameliorated. ... Sometimes on a sunny day it began even to be pleasant and genial, 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. Flowers peeped out amongst the leaves; snow-drops, crocuses, purple auriculas, and golden-eyed pansies. ... How different had this scene looked when I viewed it laid out beneath the iron sky of winter, stiffened in frost, shrouded with snow!”L.M. Montgomery, ‘Anne of Green Gables’
“Overhead was one long canopy of snowy fragrant bloom. Below the boughs the air was full of a purple twilight and far ahead a glimpse of painted sunset sky shone like a great rose window at the end of a cathedral aisle. ...Leo Tolstoy, ‘Anna Karenina’
“In the morning the sun rose brilliant and quickly wore away the thin layer of ice that covered the water, and all the warm air was quivering with the steam that rose up from the quickened earth. The old grass looked greener, and the young grass thrust up its tiny blades; the buds of the guelder-rose and of the currant and the sticky birch-buds were swollen with sap, and an exploring bee was humming about the golden blossoms that studded the willow. Larks trilled unseen above the velvety green fields and the ice-covered stubble-land; peewits wailed over the low lands and marshes flooded by the pools; cranes and wild geese flew high across the sky uttering their spring calls. ... The real spring had come.”May you enjoy spring in all its glory and in its promise of new life.
Happy spring!
