Spring Messengers

Here we have Clare speaking of the first signs of Spring, the primrose that I can see from my study across the garden, with its Devon banks and warm corners:

Where slanting banks are always with the sun 
The daisy is in blossom even now
& where warm patches by the hedges run 
The cottager when coming home from plough 
Brings home a cowslip root in flower to set
Thus ere the Christmas goes the spring is met 
Setting up little tents about the fields 
In sheltered spots — Primroses when they get 
Behind the woods old roots where ivy shields 
Their crimpled curdled leaves will shine and hide
Cart ruts and horses footings scarcely yield 
A slur for boys just crizzled & that's all
Frost shoots his needles by the small dyke side
& snow in scarce a feathers seen to fall

After seeking out this lovely poem, I remembered Ronald Blythe's words from his weekly country diary "Word from Wormingford" many years ago:

"Gulls, scores of them, take greedy flight over a bit of ploughing. Clumps of snowdrops reveal their presence in my woodland, white-tipped needles in the leaf mulch. And then that midwinter yet, at the same time, near-spring rustle of blackbirds kicking around in dry leaves, and the jewel-like glimpse of their shining eyes beneath the shrubs"

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