Oh, To Be In England....

It's 63 and sunny as February closes…Students don t-shirts and shorts for the first time all year.  Instantaneously, classes come tripping out of Derthick Hall and onto the quad to celebrate the return of Persephone.  I’ve been looking forward to this day for 10 years.  During our sojourn in Colorado, we never tasted spring.  Oh yes, we have March and April and lots of sunshine, but no spring.  Springtime in the Rockies is filled with wind and snow.  A wind that rips down off Pike’s Peak and onto the high plains as winter unleashes her final fury.  And the snow, my gosh the snow!  While February may make you shiver, it's the March blizzards that have everyone longing to see their grass beneath the lasting winter snow.  So, welcome old friend, you’ve been a long time in coming…

Robert Browning’s “Home Thoughts From Abroad” captures the essence of this glorious season.

Oh to be in England
Now that Spring's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England - now!

And after April, when May follows,
And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!
Hark! where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops - at the bent spray's edge -
That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children's dower

               - Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower