If I might see another spring… by Christina Rossetti

A poem by Christina Rossetti called “Another Spring”.

John Everett Millais, Spring (Apple Blossoms), 1859

Another Spring

If I might see another Spring

I’d not plant summer flowers and wait:

I’d have my crocuses at once,

My leafless pink mezereons,

My chill-veined snowdrops, choicer yet

My white or azure violet,

Leaf-nested primrose; anything

To blow at once, not late.

William Henry Hunt, Primroses and Bird’s Nest

If I might see another Spring

I’d listen to the daylight birds

That build their nests and pair and sing,

Nor wait for mateless nightingale;

I’d listen to the lusty herds,

The ewes with lambs as white as snow,

I’d find out music in the hail

And all the winds that blow.

Shadow from tree on grass with crocus in spring by Radius Images

If I might see another Spring —

Oh stinging comment on my past

That all my past results in ‘if’ —

If I might see another Spring

I’d laugh today, today is brief;

I would not wait for anything:

I’d use today that cannot last,

Be glad today and sing.

Percy Bysshe Shelley – I Fear Thy Kisses…

1782-88. Paul Sandby – Music by Moonlight

‘I fear thy kisses, gentle maiden;
Thou needest not fear mine;
My spirit is too deeply laden
Ever to burden thine.

I fear thy mien, thy tones, thy motion;
Thou needest not fear mine;
Innocent is the heart’s devotion
With which I worship thine.’

P.S. Shelley is mentioned in one episode of Darling Buds of May, when Primrose falls in love with Roger, a Liverpool lad. When the two met, Primrose was sitting outdoors and reading Shelley’s poems out loud, and Roger dared to say that Shelley is ‘soft’. How very rude! Shelley is by far my favourite poet of Romanticism, despite the fact that I’ve named my blog after Byron. I’m not a big fan of the show though, but my mum is, and she had to tease me about Shelley. Ma comforted Primrose at the end, telling her ‘You’ll never be sixteen and listening to nightingales again.‘