Monday
Here’s a D. H. Lawrence poem to welcome in the spring, which officially began Saturday. While fiery passion is usually coded red, this poem is brought to you by the color green. Lawrence pushes against the conventional color symbolism with “bonfires green,” “this blaze of growing,” and “this leaping combustion of spring.” The “flame-filled bushes,” meanwhile, recall Moses’s burning bush, a vision of the divine descended to earth.
“What fountain of fire am I among?” the poet asks in wonder. His final image refers to the way that a fire casts our shadow on the wall, buffeting it so that it leaps and dances (“a wild gyration”). When Lawrence talks about being a shadow “gone astray” and finding itself lost, I think he’s referring to being in the grip of desires beyond his control. Faces of people stream across his gaze.
Spring has that effect on people.
The Enkindled Spring
By D. H. Lawrence
This spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green,
Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes,
Thorn-blossom lifting in wreaths of smoke between
Where the wood fumes up and the watery, flickering rushes.I am amazed at this spring, this conflagration
Of green fires lit on the soil of the earth, this blaze
Of growing, and sparks that puff in wild gyration,
Faces of people streaming across my gaze.And I, what fountain of fire am I among
This leaping combustion of spring? My spirit is tossed
About like a shadow buffeted in the throng
Of flames, a shadow that’s gone astray, and is lost.