A Peaceful Saturday

I took advantage of mild weather this afternoon to take a bike ride.  I brought my camera with me, just in case something photogenic popped up.  Unfortunately, the scenery along the bike trail -- the usual assortment of bicyclists, golfers, and prairie dogs -- struck me as trite and weak.  Unwilling to admit defeat, when I returned home, I took a picture of this flowering tree outside my apartment building.

The "darling buds of May" are about two months early this year.

I missed my chance for a snappy photograph early this morning.  As I was driving to the Trompeau French bakery to buy a loaf of rosemary garlic bread and a blueberry croissant, I saw the following couplet from Samuel Taylor Coleridge on the display sign of an army surplus store:

Winter slumbering in the open air;
Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring!

The army surplus boys are a classy bunch.

Here is the entire poem.  It's a lament rather than an ode to Spring.


Work without Hope  (composed February, 21, 1825)

All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair—
The bees are stirring—birds are on the wing—
And Winter slumbering in the open air,
Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring!
And I the while, the sole unbusy thing,
Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.

Yet well I ken the banks where amaranths blow,
Have traced the fount whence streams of nectar flow.
Bloom, O ye amaranths! bloom for whom ye may,
For me ye bloom not! Glide, rich streams, away!
With lips unbrightened, wreathless brow, I stroll:
And would you learn the spells that drowse my soul?
Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve,
And Hope without an object cannot live.