Wan February with weeping cheer,_x000D_ _x000D_ Whose cold hand guides the youngling year_x000D_ _x000D_ Down misty roads of mire and rime,_x000D_ _x000D_ Before thy pale and fitful face_x000D_ _x000D_ The shrill wind shifts the clouds apace_x000D_ _x000D_ Through skies the morning scarce may climb._x000D_ _x000D_ Thine eyes are thick with heavy tears,_x000D_ _x000D_ But lit with hopes that light the year's.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the melancholic beauty of February, portraying the transition from winter to spring and the mix of sadness and hope that accompanies it.
In this quote, Algernon Charles Swinburne personifies the month of February as a figure with a cold and weeping demeanor, guiding the new year through dreary and difficult conditions. Despite the tears and bleakness associated with winter, there is an underlying sense of hope and anticipation for the brighter days to come, suggesting that even in times of hardship, there is a promise of renewal and growth.
In practice
This quote could inspire people during a tough winter season to look for the light in their lives.
The highest spiritual quality, the noblest property of mind a man can have, is this of loyalty ... a man with no loyalty in him, with no sense of love or reverence or devotion due to something outside and above his poor daily life, with its pains and pleasures, profits and losses, is as evil a case as man can be.
There is no such thing as a dumb poet or a handless painter. The essence of an artist is that he should be articulate.
For the crown of our life as it closes Is darkness, the fruit thereof dust; No thorns go as deep as a rose's, And love is more cruel than lust. Time turns the old days to derision, Our loves into corpses or wives; And marriage and death and division Make barren our lives.
Before the beginning of years There came to the making of man Time with a gift of tears, Grief with a glass that ran, Pleasure with pain for leaven, Summer with flowers that fell, Remembrance fallen from heaven, And Madness risen from hell, Strength without hands to smite, Love that endures for a breath; Night, the shadow of light, And Life, the shadow of death.
I that have love and no more_x000D_ _x000D_ Give you but love of you, sweet;_x000D_ _x000D_ He that hath more, let him give;_x000D_ _x000D_ He that hath wings, let him soar;_x000D_ _x000D_ Mine is the heart at your feet_x000D_ _x000D_ Here, that must love you to live.
For winter's rains and ruins are over, And all the season of snows and sins; The days dividing lover and lover, The light that loses, the night that wins; And time remembered isgrief forgotten, And frosts are slain and flowers begotten, And in green underwood and cover Blossom by blossom the spring begins.
When you have an intense contact of love with nature or another human being, like a spark, then you understand that there is no time and that everything is eternal.
Now the swinging bridge Is quieted with creepers ... Like our tendrilled life.
The trash and litter of nature disappears into the ground with the passing of each year, but man's litter has more permanence.
As a young boy, I was obsessed with endangered species and the extinct species that men killed off. Biology was the subject in school that I was incredibly passionate about.
I thought of the wilderness we had left behind us, open to sea and sky, joyous in its plenitude and simplicity, perfect yet vulnerable, unaware of what is coming, defended by nothing, guarded by no one.
I became an environmentalist because I love the living world, but I spend much of my life thinking about electricity, industrial processes and civil engineering.
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