Spring has sprung. When will winter end?

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In January 1821, the Hudson River froze solid, and people strolled between New Jersey and New York.

Many of us have suffered serious winter fatigue. One can admire the pristine mornings and dazzling, snow-laden trees for just so many weeks. We feel isolated and overweight. Cravings for carbs have driven our meal choices toward rice and pasta and bread and beans. Our skin is pasty, our muscles are atrophied.

Spring arrived last week, and the sun hovered above the equator, creating exactly 12 hours of sunlight and 12 hours of darkness. Spoiler alert: the Farmers’ Almanac does not use the words “fair and dry” until its May forecast.

While we wait, let us turn to the poets and philosophers who offer their thoughts on the glories of spring.

April prepares her green traffic light and the world thinks Go. —Christopher Morley

Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night. —Rainer Maria Rilke

It’s spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you’ve got it, you want — oh, you don’t quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so! —Mark Twain


If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant; if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome. —Anne Bradstreet

April is a promise that May is bound to keep. —Hal Borland

Indoors or out, no one relaxes in March, that month of wind and taxes, the wind will presently disappear, the taxes last us all the year. —Ogden Nash

Every spring is the only spring — a perpetual astonishment. —Ellis Peters

Spring is sooner recognized by plants than by men. —Chinese proverb

The first day of spring is one thing, and the first spring day is another. The difference between them is sometimes as great as a month. —Henry Van Dyke

If you’ve never been thrilled to the very edges of your soul by a flower in spring bloom, maybe your soul has never been in bloom. —Terri Guillemet

Now every field is clothed with grass, and every tree with leaves; now the woods put forth their blossoms, and the year assumes its gay attire. —Virgil
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