Welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.

I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Thursday, May 16th, 2004.

Today's poem is by Thomas Nash, and it's called Spring, the Sweet Spring.

Nash was born 1567, died 1601, more or less the same time that Hamlet was coming into the world, the play, not the person.

And he was best known as a writer of prose. In fact, he was famously one of those brilliant writers of prose in Elizabethan England.

But once in a while, he would take a turn at poetry.

He felt very strongly that all art, but especially poetry, should avoid the ditch of loving and seeking only pleasure

while disregarding morality, but not being overly interested in morality at the expense of

beauty.

You can be the judge of whether this poem accomplishes that or not, but it is certainly

the most unambiguously phrase-worthy poem we're featuring this week.

He has said in other places that poems should be slightly didactic,

and that to impress or teach one lesson or point is superior to preferable to trying to advance many,

and thus confuse your methods as the poet or confuse your audience.

Here is Spring, the Sweet Spring. I'll read it once for a few comments and then read it one more time.

Spring, the sweet spring, is the year's pleasant king.

Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring.

Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing.

Cuckoo, jug, jug, buoy to widow.

The palm and may make countryhouses gay lambs frisk and play the shepherd's pipe all day and we hear eye birds tune this merry lay cuckoo jug jug pui to widowoo

the fields breathe sweet the daisies kiss our feet, young lovers meet old wives, a sunning sit,

And every street, these tunes our ears do greet, cuckoo, jug, jug, pui to widowoo, the spring, the sweet spring.

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