Spring the Cheat

A previous post on this blog shared Sara Teasdale’s “Spring in War-Time,” a poem that ironically juxtaposes spring battle offensives with the regeneration and rebirth most often associated with the season.  In “Spring the Cheat,” British author Winifred Letts contrasts the promise of spring with the devastating losses felt by those on the home front.

Spring the Cheat

The wych-elm shakes its sequins to the ground,

With every wind the chestnut blossoms fall:

Down by the stream the willow-warblers sing,

And in the garden to a merry sound

The mown grass flies.  The fantail pigeons call

And sidle on the roof; a murmuring

Of bees about the woodbine-covered wall,

A child’s sweet chime of laughter – this is spring.

Luminous evenings when the blackbird sways

Upon the rose and tunes his flageolet*,

A sea of bluebells down the woodland ways,--

O exquisite spring, all this—and yet—and yet—

Kinder to me the bleak face of December

Who gives no cheating hopes, but says—“Remember.”

            —Winifred Letts

Blossoms fall from trees like sequins, birdsong echoes in woods and streams, bees drowsily buzz their bass note as children’s treble laughter fills the scented air – but all is out-of-tune with the bleak mood of those who mourn. The renewal of the natural world merely underscores what has been lost forever: beloved men who were killed in the Great War. 

Winifred Letts, a certified medical massage therapist, enlisted as a Volunteer Aid Detachment nurse and worked in military hospitals through much of the war. Other poems by Letts that have been previously posted on this blog include “If Love of Mine,” “Hallow-e’en, 1915,” “July, 1916,” and “Screens (In a Hospital).”

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*Flageolets are woodwind instruments; small versions known as “bird flageolets” were used to teach captive songbirds to sing.