Spring
Stopford Brooke, M. A. Songs 2:10-13 My beloved spoke, and said to me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.… No wonder is so wonderful as the birth of spring. Music, painting, and poetry, all art and every artist has felt its power to quicken life and warm emotion, and has striven to express its charm and thrill of joy. Every year we are moved by its coming, morally and physically. No one who heard the warm west wind of this April flowing through the trees and felt the secret stirring that was made in blood and brain, but knew the influence of spring upon the body. As the sap ran upwards through the flowers, so the blood went swifter through the veins, and the physical emotion sent its message to that immaterial life of thought and feeling which we call the spirit. And the spirit receiving the impressions, took and moulded them into ideas by the imagination and sent the ideas forth to give motives to the will. The first thought that occurs is the abounding life of Spring. Through all, there ran, as the first mark of life, the sense and power of love. All things that lived seemed to sacrifice their best in colour, beauty, and life for one another; I could not think of any one leaf or plant without thinking of the rest, so deep was the impression of the brotherhood of all, so strong was the feeling of ceaseless intercommunion that came to me from the universe of spring, and told me that love was its spirit. And not only love lived there, but joy that was intense. The face of every flower was like that of a radiant child. The air shook with the joyful thoughts of the birds, the dance of insect life had begun, and the airy ravishment of the butterfly born too soon, was the expression of the life that trembled with delight through every animal. Life, love, joy, what are these in their tale to the spirit, as spring sends them flowing into our hearts? They are a revelation of the Being of God. Its first attribute is infinite life. Decay, death, sorrow, dulness, the wearing out of feeling, they are only the accidents of our trial time, and in themselves part of life and not of death. Let them touch us as they will, they cannot last for ever; for they are weaker than life, when life is God. Again, this life is Love-love in God, the same as goodness. What else can it be but love, for it is creative? That there is such a thing as creation; that life and joy come out of death and pain; that the wonder of the spring is born out of the travail of the winter, is proof enough to those who feel how impossible creation is to evil, that it is goodness — goodness that stream forth as love, love that is lifo in all things, that is the spirit of the universe. And, again, if life and love be one in the being of God, that being must also be joy, infinite, self-exultant, varying through every phase of quiet and of rapture. Words would fail to paint one moment of its triumphant fulness; joy is the glory of God. True, it is dear to us who need sympathy in pain, who know so much of pain, to feel, through Christ, that God can be touched with sorrow for us, that it pitieth Him to see us in the dust, but that is not of the absolute in His Being. The essence of His Being is, on the contrary, joy, intense, overflowing, streaming in rapturous life through universes of life, material and immaterial. These, then, are the three thoughts of God's Being that we bind up with the woods and fields and streams of spring. We take the same thoughts now and bring them to touch on our own life. Spring is the image of our youth, and the lesson we learn from it is — that our youth should be Life, and Love, and Joy, and that these are its natural companions. Life lives with youth, and its first rush is wonderful. Thoughts break out into leaf, feelings into blossoms; a single day in that time of sun and rain may make the whole heart like a woodland; when the foliage of sweet thoughts first appears the grass is not seen for flowers. The first touch of love, the touch of a new aspiration, the winning of one new knowledge, may loosen the bonds of a thousand seeds of thought, and set them shooting upwards into growth and life. We are often born in a day; life then begins, and I hold it our duty in youth to put our whole force into living. There is yet another lesson. Along with the leaves is born the cup of the flower, and with the flowers are involved the seeds. In all true life future life is hidden; provision is made for that production which is the first mark of life, for continuance of life and for its flower. Think of that truth as the spring moves your blood. Is there the element of continuance in anything you do? In your life are there seeds which, when decay comes, will insure a new outburst of life? Have you some certainty that you nave life enough to flower? Is the true flower of a beautiful or useful life already formed in you? Are you showing forth already the beauty and sweetness and charm which tell that the flower is coming? If these things be so, then you are living the fullest and the quickest life, the life of which spring is the image, of which God is the reality. But you cannot have in youth the life of spring without also having its love. Make the brotherhood of the flowers, their intercommunion of good, their joyous sacrifice of all they have in order to give joy, the example and impulse of your youth; make your springtide the reflection of the spring in love. Pour forth all the odour, colour, charm and happiness you have to all your friends, to your home, to your daily society, to the poor and sorrowful, the joyous and prosperous. Charm the world by love. Brighten darkened lives, soften the rude, make a sunshine of peace in stormy places, cover the faults and follies of men with the flowers of love, And, finally, this will be joy. Not the wild, self-exhausting joy of wild persons wildly wrought, but something which, though quieter, is even more intense, only it is not over tense. The strings of life are in tune, not stretched almost to breaking; and music comes, not discord; music in which others rejoice, in which we ourselves rejoice. Life led by love has as its child the radiancy of joy. It is a joy none can take away, because it has its roots in the joy which we make in others, because it has its deepest root in the joy which life and love make in the being of God. (Stopford Brooke, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. WEB: My beloved spoke, and said to me, "Rise up, my love, my beautiful one, and come away.