Blossoming

“ These flowers all blossom, or trees, or stars, are shy and timorous. A splash and they shrink away. The hope of such wilderness—as barren-looking as desert sandstone—ever blossoming again seems forbidden. ”

“ It is true the landscape no longer wore the bleak, wintry aspect that it had done a few weeks before, the trees having already decked themselves in fresh green, while the first flowers were blossoming in the meadows and fields, but this blooming and growing went forward only slowly, because sunshine was lacking. ”

“ Methinks I see the sunset light flooding the river valley, the western hills stretching to the horizon, overhung with trees gorgeous and glowing with the tints of autumn,—a mighty flower-garden, blossoming under the spell of the enchanter, Frost; ”

“ 85 Who are you, reader, reading my poems an hundred years hence? I cannot send you one single flower from this wealth of the spring, one single streak of gold from yonder clouds. Open your doors and look abroad. From your blossoming garden gather fragrant memories of the vanished flowers of an hundred years before. In the joy of your heart may you feel the living joy that sang one spring morning, sending its glad voice across an hundred years. ”

“ Doubtless these superlatively early blossomings have to do with the present extraordinary winter, now more than half gone, but not altogether, perhaps. Many a plant is more vigorous than we suspect, and stray flowers are hidden beneath the fallen leaves more often than we know. ”

“ When you came up profusely, one can hardly believe
That blossoms like these, such wee little mites
Could produce in my garden such wonderful sights.
When once you are planted when Spring comes around,
Multiplied by hundreds you’d peep through the ground;
Awaiting the heat, the Sun and the rain
In the sweet early summer to grow lovely again.
You come every year, you make my heart glad
With such beautiful blossoms, how can I be sad?
The humming bird loves you, they come every day
And drink of your nectar, so softly and gay.{8} ”

“ On moss-spread turf to rest awhile, poor thing!
Played with an insect, stripped of leaves a flower,
Or broke the new shoots summoned forth by spring.
And sang! The sun seemed to smile in her song!
Some scrap it was of popular melody;
Thus sings the linnet clear and loud and long,
Until its notes mount straight up to the sky.
O breath of lovely days! Mysterious strength
Of sunbeam warm, or blossom newly blown!
O joy to hear, to see, to feel at length
The charm divine by God on all things thrown!
In spring can any child a long time sob?
The blade of grass attracts it, or the leaf ”

“ The cold storms, and the winter come and kill the blossoms and scatter the leaves, and what would you do then?' To finite minds like ours, it would seem to have been a more beautiful arrangement of nature, could it have been, that we could always have the spring time in its glory with us; if the leaves and the blossoms were always young and fresh and fragrant; if the cold storms of winter could never come to 'kill the blossoms and scatter the leaves;' if the sun would always come up bright and clear; if the birds were always merry, and their glad voices always on the air. ”

“ We see in winter that the foliage of the trees is gone, that they present to the view nothing but leafless branches—we see that the loveliness of the flower decays, though the root continues in the earth. What opinion should we form of that man who, when he walked in the freshness of the spring, beheld the fields enamelled with flowers, and the foliage bursting from the buds, should find fault with this beautiful order, and murmur his contemptible discontents because winter must come, and the landscape be robbed of its beauty for a while again? ”

“ Stir marvelous dreams of blossoms red.
Then the sap creeps swift; the bare boughs
⁠bloom;
The violets under the boughs make room.
And because the heron is on the wing,
The earth blooms into the waking spring! ”

“ But quickly the vision passes, when our eyes wander on down the leafy path of autumn that was once the primrose path of spring; for there we see—is it an autumn hedgerow or an ocean on a night when the air is saturate with golden moonlight? All before our eyes is yellow—not a russet tinge appears among those gracious leaf-ripples that lose themselves in the distance. We wander along until the mellow line is broken by a forest of bramble. ”

“ I see the jade-green grass and realize that it is Spring.
Everywhere there is an immense confusion of ripples and agitations.
Why does the waving and fluttering of the weeping-willow make me sad?
The sky is so bright it shines; everything is lovely and at peace.
The breath of the sea is green, fresh, sweet-smelling;
The heaths are vari-coloured, blue—green—as a kingfisher feather. Oh-h-h-h-h—How far one can see!
Clouds whirl, fly, float, and cluster together, each one sharply defined;
Waves are smoothed into a wide, continuous flowing. ”

“ We behold the bright flowers, which beautify the earth, open their rich petals, shed their fragrance on the breeze, and then droop and perish. Sad emblem of the perishing nature of all things earthly. May we not behold in the fading vegetation, and the falling leaves of autumn, a true type of human life? Truly "we all do fade as a leaf." Life at the best is but a shadow that passes quickly away. ”

“ As there be flowers that drink the dews of spring and summer, and feed upon all the rains, and only just before the winter comes burst forth into bloom, so it is with some of the noblest blossoms of the soul. ”

“ Or the clouds driven by the breeze
Floating everywhere.
[223]
LIGHT AND SHADOW.
Shine down, fair sun, on vale and hill,
And light each height and hollow;—
No shade rests in the air, but still
On earth the shadows follow.
Grow green, old trees, where'er you may
Your festival be keeping;—
On branch and stem, on leaf and spray,
Decay is slowly creeping.
Bloom bright, fair flowers, in wild or mead,
Around you all perfuming;—
The blight that mingles with each seed,
The blossom is consuming. ”

“ Their great balls of blossom change from a pale yellow green to bright blue, brighter almost than the sky above, and as they fade, they turn to rosy purple, and back again to a dull green, clinging with ungraceful tenacity to life, as though loth or afraid to die, preferring to rot on their stem rather than drop untimely—unlike the blossoms of spring, ever ready to depart life at the call of nature. ”

“ A cloud, heavy with rain, drifts across the sky, and big, cool drops splash with a hissing noise in the fire, upon our upturned faces, upon the warm, flower-sown earth which exhales, like incense, the odours of sun-heated soil and summer shower. ”

“ And moisten every leaf with balmy dew;
But now thy rich luxuriant bloom is fled,
Thy foliage wears a pale autumnal hue;
Too soon thy glowing colours have decay'd,
Like thee the flowers of pleasure smile and fade. ”

“ He sank into a tossing sea of blossoms, which was the conflux of the starry heavens; on the ground of immensity all stars bloomed white and neighborly blossom-leaves tossed against each other. But why did this flower-field growing from the earth up even to heaven intoxicate with the exhaling spirit of a thousand cups all souls that flew over it and sunk down in bewildering ecstasy? Why did a juggling wind mingle souls together with souls and flowers amidst a snow-flurry of sparks and many-colored flakes of fire? ”

“ With all the pomp and glory of Nature in full view; beholding in the wet, low lands red, succulent shoots, which, under the moist, fiery breath of the season, seem really to grow an inch at a time, and to shoot up as by magic; hearing bird-songs filling the air from morning to night,—we feel a sort of tropical exultation, as if great, succulent shoots of passion or poetry might spring up within us from out this growing dream-life. ”

“ Whether manifesting itself in the inconspicuous flower upon the tree or in the equally unassuming inflorescence of the vegetable, or unfurling petals of satin or gauze of brilliant hue and marvelous beauty, the blossom is the origin of most that is useful or beautiful in the organic world about us. Strip the world of its blossoms, and the higher forms of life must come to a speedy termination. ”

“ They awaken from their slumber in the spring, the scales fall from their buds, the fountains within them are unsealed, and they again become streams of living energy, breaking into leaf and bloom and fruit under the magic of the sun's rays. ”

“ Authority is hurtful to the bloom
Of all th' adornments that are seen to throw
Around the paths of life their welcome glow.
No flower or balmy shrub dispels the gloom
That marks the high-set cliff; but round the base.
Sometimes we see wild blossoms thickly strewn.
Nursed by the sheltered warmth the rock has thrown. ”

“ There are many flowers, which in the early morn, seem to possess little interest or beauty, for their bloom is closed; but when the sun gets up, and they feel its genial heat, the leaf expands, and the blossom opens, sweet in its fragrance, and lovely in its colouring and form. ”

“ I did not tell any one about this dream or even think of it again. How shallow I was!
In the Spring I enjoyed the Princess's garden. Cherry-blossoms waited for!—cherry-blossoms lamented over! In Spring I love the flowers whether in her garden or in mine.
On the moon-hidden day of the Ever-growing month [March 30, 1023] , I started for a certain person's house to avoid the evil influence of the earth god. [37] There I saw delightful cherry-blossoms still on the tree and the day after my return I sent this poem:
Alone, without tiring, I gazed at the cherry-blossoms of your garden. ”

“ For look you, who cares for flowers where flowers always are? In my country, after the iron winter breaks and the sun drives away the long night, the first blossoms twinkling on the melting ice-edge are things of joy, and we look, and look again. ”

“ Day after day opens and dies peacefully away like a perfect flower; or, if a strong cold wind drives across the day, it still blows in a heaven of limitless clear blue. But in early spring the sky is often veiled in a floating canopy of grey, or one may watch the white masses of clouds thin and melt on the blue. ”

“ Without being boisterous, the wind filled the leaves with their mournful whispers, and the fragrance of broken leaves and forest flowers, that always breathe sweetest as the frost kills them, floated silently on the air, saddening the atmosphere with the perfume of their decay. ”

“ Season when ocean sinks asleep,
Blossom covers the world.
Bees with puny strength carry
A goodly burden, the harvest of blossoms;
Up the mountain-side kine take with them mud,
The ant makes a rich meal. ”

“ The light is shining, the darkness is breaking, and the thick clouds are moving, and the hidden ones are being gathered in. We have already plucked the first flowers; stern winter yields, and soon we shall have the full spring, the singing of birds, and the trees in full blossom. ”

“ Blossoms! They are the blossoms of another world, whose fruitage is angels and archangels. Or dew-drops? They are dew-drops that have their source, not in the chambers of the earth, nor among the vapors of the sky, which the next breath of wind, or the next flash of sunshine may dry up forever, but among the everlasting fountains and inexhaustible reservoirs of mercy and love. Playthings! God!—if the little creatures would but appear to us in their true shape for a moment! We should fall upon our faces before them, or grow pale with consternation,—or fling them off with horror and loathing. ”

“ Even when it rained—and it did rain sometimes—who could fail to see the beauty, all its own, of the green of grass, and the darker stems and branches of trees, showing faintly through the veil of the mist and the soft descending shower? ”

“ But despite frost, and snail, and fly, and drought, and flood, the joy in a garden must always enormously exceed the pain. The frost may shrivel the young leaves, but the first sun-kiss brings out green successors ”

“ Nature, as if to mock the snows, had covered the whole turf to their very edge with blossoms, and the rich blue iris, and a very delicate white flower I had never seen before, were actually growing within the verge of the region of frost. ”

“ Why, then, should autumn tinge our thoughts with sadness. We fade as the leaf, and the leaf fades only to revivify. Though it fall, it shall rise again. Does the bud fear to become a blossom, or the blossom shudder as it swells into fruit ”

“ Blossom yet once with the blossom of old,
Let the roses shine through the snow !"
The moon and the blossoms they gloomily gleam,
The bird will not be glad :
The dead never speak when the mournful dream,
They are too weak and sad. ”

“ In my home we never think of letting flowers remain without water. We look upon them as living things. Every blossom has a life of its own; it knows pain and thirst. When I see them, torn from hedge and meadow by careless hands and thrown on to the roads to die in the dust, I know that for each flower an angel weeps. ”

“ Is it because the earth she loves so well, still rising nearer, seems to hover close above the border of the second world, sweet with the flowers of spring, while nightingales lie brooding, with those burning hearts of theirs pressed on the grasses and the meadow blooms,—the stormy skies all brightening into rainbows? ”

“ Near at hand, dotted all over the field, bloomed the wild snowdrops in utmost profusion, with a looser habit of growth, a longer stalk, and a wider [Pg 125] flower than the garden variety. Lovely pure-white blossoms, with their tiny green markings, they stood like fairy bells among the grass, so dainty and perfect, it seemed almost a sacrilege to disturb them. ”

“ The sweetest songs of the bird are sung in the darkest days,
And rarest blooms of the spring are found in the wildest ways.
The brightest blush of the rose is blown as the petals fade.
The greenest grass of the earth is grown in the hidden glade ”