RTR2BPEJ
A tourist lies on the grass, surrounded by spring flowers in a park in central London. Reuters

Spring is officially here, and after a winter like this one, we need to go bigger than the age-old "April showers bring May flowers." For centuries, dozens of famous poets have recognized the vernal equinox in their work. On this Friday, the first day of spring, it's clear that many writers saw the start of the warm season as a source of inspiration. You can, too -- even if there's still snow on the ground where you are.

Below are a few of the best poems about spring, culled from infoplease and factmonster.

Simple and fresh and fair from winter’s close emerging,

As if no artifice of fashion, business, politics, had ever been,

Forth from its sunny nook of shelter’d grass — innocent, golden, calm as the dawn,

The spring’s first dandelion shows its trustful face.

— Walt Whitman, "The First Dandelion"

For winter's rains and ruins are over,

And all the seasons of snows and sins;

The days dividing lover and lover,

The light that loses, the night that wins;

And time remembered is grief forgotten,

And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,

And in green underwood and cover

Blossom by blossom the spring begins.

— Algernon Charles Swinburne, "Atalanta in Calydon"

And Spring arose on the garden fair,

Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere;

And each flower and herb on Earth's dark breast

rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley, "The Sensitive Plant"

The first day of spring is one thing, and the first

spring day is another. The difference between them is

sometimes as great as a month.

— Henry Van Dyke, "Fisherman's Luck"

The sun was warm but the wind was chill.

You know how it is with an April day.

When the sun is out and the wind is still,

You're one month on in the middle of May.

But if you so much as dare to speak,

a cloud come over the sunlit arch,

And wind comes off a frozen peak,

And you're two months back in the middle of March.

— Robert Frost, "Two Tramps in Mud Time"

A Light exists in Spring

Not present on the Year

At any other period —

When March is scarcely here.

— Emily Dickinson, "No. 812"

RELATED STORIES
Winter