Ode to Spring

Onto happier things, after spending a while cleaning up the garage this evening, I had a sudden urge to re-read my favorite section from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight which shows the passage of time by intimately describing the four seasons. Luckily I found my copy in one of the unlabed boxes I was organizing. I'll spare you the old english and share the translation with you. Describing Spring the author wrote:

After Christmas came mean-spirited Lent,

That tries the body with fish and plainer nourishment;

But then the weather on earth battles with winter,

The cold shrinks downwards, clouds rise higher,

And shed sparkling rain in warming showers,

Falling on smiling plains where flowers unfold.

Both open fields and woodlands put on green dress;

Birds hasten to build, and rapturously sing

For joy of gentle summer that follows next... (lines 502-510)

I love to think of the cold of winter shrinking downward out of the air and deep into the ground where it will lurk until its season comes again. As I looked outside my office window this morning, I'm pretty sure I saw the winter weather battling to hold on to its last moments. How about you guys, do you have any books, movies, etc. that call out to you this time of year?

If you interested in reading Sir Gawain but not quite ready for the original, Tolkien did a translation of his own that keeps a rhyming scheme. You can pick it up for pretty cheap used here.