Poem of the Week – The Enkindled Spring by D.H Lawrence

For months, we have braved grizzly rain, caliginous skies and baleful storms, wrapping ourselves up in clothes worthy of arctic exploration to face the air’s prickly chill. But, whisper it quietly, it feels as if Winter’s symptoms are beginning to dissipate and glorious Spring is beginning to bloom.

This week’s poem, “The Enkindled Spring” by D.H Lawrence conjures up beauteous images of Spring in its infancy, from “bursts of bonfires green” to the “wild puffing of emerald trees.” Lawrence (1885-1930) was a prolific writer who produced a wide variety of books, his most memorable being Lady Chatterley’s Lover which aroused controversy at the time on the grounds of sexual “obscenity” and was subsequently banned.

But besides writing enough books – explicit and non-explicit – to fill a library, D.H Lawrence wrote more than 800 poems during his polymathic lifetime, “The Enkindled Spring” being one of them. Through using a sparkling motif of fire, Lawrence heralds in the hotter temperatures afoot and the vitality and energy a flicker of a flame can bring.

The Enkindled Spring by D.H Lawrence (1916)

This spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green,
Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes,
Thorn-blossom lifting in wreaths of smoke between
Where the wood fumes up and the watery, flickering rushes.

I am amazed at this spring, this conflagration
Of green fires lit on the soil of the earth, this blaze
Of growing, and sparks that puff in wild gyration,
Faces of people streaming across my gaze.

And I, what fountain of fire am I among
This leaping combustion of spring? My spirit is tossed
About like a shadow buffeted in the throng
Of flames, a shadow that’s gone astray, and is lost.