Today is William Wordsworth's birthday:


I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

With apologies to our southern hemisphere friends:

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 comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you're two months back in the middle of March.


Robert Frost (1874–1963)
Two Tramps in Mud Time (1936)

RF must've spent Aprils in Kentucky, Jackie. Our weather has been just like that this month.

Song of Solomon 2:10-13, KJV

10  My beloved spake, and said unto me,
Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.

11  For, lo, the winter is past,
the rain is over and gone;

12  the flowers appear on the earth;
the time of the singing of birds is come,
and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land;

13  the fig tree putteth forth her green figs,        
and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell.
Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.

 
(this is beautifully arranged by Henry Purcell)

There's a wonderfully yin/yang aptness to my reading this thread on the very day we had the first frost (Jack, Not Bob) of Autumn

spring is sprung
the grass is ris
i wonder where
the boidies is

I know where
The boidies is:
They're eating all
My radishes.

Then there was that time, oh, ten or so years ago:

Spring is sprung
the boids is here
When's the snow
gon' disappear?

Here's how I learnt it from my father:

Spring is sprung,
The grass is riz,
I wonder where the boidies is.
The boid is on the wing.
Why that's absoid,
I always hoid
The wing was on the boid.

Just a few days ago I was looking for this to see who wrote it (Ogden Nash is a popular choice, but I think he just gets lumped with all these, like Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain). I couldn't find any definite version or author, though there are lots of versions out there. But I did come across a great big list of hundreds and hundreds of pieces of poetry mentioning spring - mainly Dickinson, Whitman, Frost, but lots of others (including copyright violations - Plath, Hughes, Neruda, Dylan Thomas etc).
Funny thing is it's the result of a search for the same ditty:

http://www.americanpoems.com/search/spring_sprung_grass_riz

Here the writer remains Anon:
http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/archives/article.asp?ArtID=5514

while, antipodally, the suggestion is Damon Runyon (while discussing the origin and usage of terse):
http://www.abc.net.au/classic/breakfast/stories/s949034.htm

This--is beautiful. Thanks, Jenet.

Amy Lowell - The Green Bowl

This little bowl is like a mossy pool
In a Spring wood, where dogtooth violets grow
Nodding in chequered sunshine of the trees;
A quiet place, still, with the sound of birds,
Where, though unseen, is heard the endless song
And murmur of the never resting sea.
'T was winter, Roger, when you made this cup,
But coming Spring guided your eager hand
And round the edge you fashioned young green leaves,
A proper chalice made to hold the shy
And little flowers of the woods. And here
They will forget their sad uprooting, lost
In pleasure that this circle of bright leaves
Should be their setting; once more they will dream
They hear winds wandering through lofty trees
And see the sun smiling between the leaves.

I made a cup?

I did think of you when I read that! <grin>