Spring affords us all a fresh start
The literary world marked the two hundredth anniversary of the death of the poet John Keats.
He died of “consumption” in Rome on February 23, 1821, and was buried in the dead of night outside the city walls.
The lateness of the hour and location of the cemetery was in keeping with the religious sensitivities of the time.
Oddly enough all of this would have eminently suited Keats “half in love with easeful death” wishing to “cease upon the midnight with no pain” as he famously put it in his Ode to a Nightingale.
Likewise Keats longed to escape to a place of rustic peace, as he told his friend Joseph Severn “I shall soon be laid in the quiet grave – thank God for the quiet grave.” An unmarked rural grave was what he wanted and what he got.
Later, however, a plain memorial was erected by friends and admirers but with no name engraved on it, only the enigmatic inscription Keats himself had composed “Here lies one whose name is writ on water.”
John Keats was 25 when he died and perhaps, because of this; his long illness and early death, his poetry is shot through with an aching melancholic beauty.
A beauty that celebrates the joy and gift of life, made all the more intense by the sure knowledge of it’s brevity.
The passing nature of beauty is also something prized in Japanese culture, where they set aside a fortnight in their annual calendar to celebrate the flowering of the cherry blossom.
The Japanese custom of Hanami, which translates as “blossom gazing,” is when families and friends picnic under the flowering cherry blossom to enjoy its fleeting beauty. It helps them to reflect on the nature and purpose of existence, amidst life’s constant changes.
Keats would certainly have recognized this, and perhaps even applied his famous aphorism to it: “A thing of beauty is a joy forever!”
The National Trust recently announced its intention to plant circles of flowering trees, including the cherry blossom, around the country to try to recreate something of Japan’s annual “Hanami” festival.
They will be planted in urban areas to bring colour, community and nature to the “grey desert” of our oftennomadic cityscapes.
The lockdown has helped us rediscover our need for nature; its beauty and the lessons it has to teach us.
The initiative reminds us that we are most at home in nature, and that being surrounded by the natural world is good for our physical and mental wellbeing, as well as inviting the deeper reflections about life and its meaning.
As we tentatively welcome the coming of spring and the lengthening of the days, the harbingers of this new beginning bring a special joy that cheer the heart and enliven the soul.
I experienced this the other day, as I saw the long anticipated and beautiful carpet of crocuses that annually crowds the grass about the trees at the bottom of our road.
The snowdrops, too, delicate and precious, bring the promise of springtime and the assurance of new life to come.
But for me, it’s the daffodils that speak most eloquently to me. For they speak in these Lenten days of the coming of Easter and the promise of Resurrection.
Lent invites such delicate new growth in our own lives, a springtime of new beginnings for us and fresh starts with God.
Like Keats who composed his own epitaph pointing to the transience of life: Here lies one whose name is writ on water.
It is sometimes only in understanding the fundamental impermanence of all things that we truly appreciate the value of life and the opportunity of faith in the present moment.