Spring has Sprung!!

With Spring firmly on the way, and in light of the recent beautiful weather, I thought i'd post one of my favourite bits of poetry about nature, wildlife, the joy of being in God's creation, the sights, smells and sounds of a walk through the countryside on a Spring day. Keats was a master of evocation, his words have a wonderfully ambrosial quality, you can almost smell and hear and taste what he describes. Hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown 
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet, 
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs, 
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet 
Wherewith the seasonable month endows 
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild; 
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine; 
Fast fading violets cover’d up in leaves; 
And mid-May’s eldest child, 
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, 
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves. 

John Keats (Ode to a Nightingale 1817)