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| Kawase Hasui, Spring Evening at Kintai Bridge, 1947 |
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
— Robert Frost, “Nothing Gold Can Stay”
We have had one of the longest and most beautiful Springs in New York City this year I can remember. The flowers and blossoming trees seem brighter and longer-lasting than normal, although I have nothing but faulty memory to claim this as fact.
Perhaps I have been more alert to signs of Spring than I am wont after a long and difficult Winter, and more appreciative of the tilting of our planet as balmy breezes and warming sunshine replace bitter freeze. Certainly there has been little enough change in my life for me to believe cold Winter has been banished for good. But hope rises up like tree sap.
The cherry blossoms and gardenias of Central Park fade already. Greedy trees suck up snow melt and sunshine to carpet the grass with shade and canopy over the sky with green. Hot, hard Summer is coming.
Get out now, while you can, and drink the sweet dregs of Spring while they last. There is a special glory to warm sunshine when it is tempered by cool grass and the chilly whispers of Winter’s reluctant departure on the breeze.
Get out now. One day there will come a Winter whose Spring you will never see. Do not waste the Spring you have today.
Nothing gold can stay.
© 2013 The Epicurean Dealmaker. All rights reserved.
