Come Spring, all shall be well
‘Every today is longer than yesterday...’
ALAMY, ANDREW HASSON
Could there possibly be anything new to say about spring? Humans must have discussed its arrival – the first snowdrop, the first lamb, the first swallow – for as long as language has existed. The opening poem in The Oxford Book of English Verse – “Summer is y-comen in” – is an example of reverdie, a whole medieval genre devoted to the subject. Key texts cited by Simon Barnes in Spring Is the Only Season range from The Canterbury Tales and Finnegans Wake to The Wind in the Willows and The Inimitable Jeeves.
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