Spring, the sweet spring
Is the year's pleasant thing
...or so says the sane, if unwise, Thomas Nashe.
But John Clare, who was called mad, tells it like it really is:
March month of "many weathers" wildly hums
In hail & snow & rain & threatning comes...
...Yet winter seems half weary of its toil
& round the ploughman on the elting soil
Will thread a minutes sunshine wild & warm
Thro the ragged places of the swimming storm
& oft the shepherd in his path will spy
The little daisy in the wet grass lye
That to the peeping sun enlivens gay
Like Labour smiling on a holiday
Anyone who's lived through an English winter knows the joy of spotting a daisy at last!
John Clare is the poet-genius of small things. How glorious that nearly two hundred years after that daisy gave him a jolt of hope and joy his vision is still shining through the darkness of this year.
Word To Use Today: elting. This is a dialect word and means softening, or muddy. It comes from the Old Norse elta which means to knead.
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