Embracing the Merriment of May

"The world's favorite season is the spring.

All things seem possible in May."

- Edwin Way Teale

"You are as welcome as the flowers in May."

- Charles Macklin

"What is so sweet and dear

As a prosperous morn in May,

The confident prime of the day,

And the dauntless youth of the year,

When nothing that asks for bliss,

Asking aright, is denied,

And half of the world a bridegroom is,

And half of the world a bride?"

- William Watson, Ode in May, 1880

"Oh! that we two were Maying

Down the stream of the soft spring breeze;

Like children with violets playing,

In the shade of the whispering trees."

- Charles Kingsley

"The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh

In fullgrown thickness every May.

Last year is dead, they seem to say,

Begin afresh, afresh, afresh."

- Philip Larkin, The Trees