Spring is beautiful

NOTHING is so beautiful as spring —
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.

What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden. — Have, get, before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.

by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)

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 Er ist's

Frühling lässt sein blaues Band
Wieder flattern durch die Lüfte;
Süße, wohlbekannte Düfte
Streifen ahnungsvoll das Land.
Veilchen träumen schon,
Wollen balde kommen.
—  Horch, von fern ein leiser Harfenton!
Frühling, ja du bist's!
Dich hab' ich vernommen!

Eduard Mörike
(Erstdruck 1828)

The Trees, by Philip Larkin

The trees are coming into leaf Like something almost being said;

The recent buds relax and spread, Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again And we grow old?

No, they die too, Their yearly trick of looking new Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh In fullgrown thickness every May

. Last year is dead, they seem to say, Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.