Innholdsfortegnelse for Spring 2022 i Siegfried

Siegfried in spring is mud on your boots and rain on the windows. It is the smell of wet mornings as you take coffee on the doorstop so you can watch the fattening robin sing on a branch of the still-bare oak tree. Siegfried in spring is lambing on a cold Yorkshire moor in your old woolen cardigan, returning home to cider, ham, and dark cake. Siegfried in spring is foil-wrapped chocolate eggs, hidden in new moss, the crook of a branch, an old wheelbarrow. They are easily found in sunlight, where the sun’s rays catch the coloured foil, but those tucked in the shade will lie unfound until a June sun reveals their hiding place. In springtime, Siegfried is hot cross buns slathered in butter and apricot jam. You…

The banded ones were all dressed in white gowns — a gay survival from Old Style days, when cheerfulness and May-time were synonyms — days before the habit of taking long views had reduced emotions to a monotonous average. Their first exhibition of themselves was in a processional march of two and two round the parish. Ideal and real clashed slightly as the sun lit up their figures against the green hedges and creeper-laced house-fronts; for, though the whole troop wore white garments, no two whites were alike among them. Some approached pure blanching; some had a bluish pallor; some worn by the older characters (which had possibly lain by folded for many a year) inclined to a cadaverous tint, and to a Georgian style. In addition to the distinction…

in Just-spring when the world is mud-luscious the littlelame balloonman whistles far and wee and eddieandbill comerunning from marbles andpiracies and it’sspring when the world is puddle-wonderful the queerold balloonman whistlesfar and weeand bettyandisbel come dancing from hop-scotch and jump-rope and it’sspringand the goat-footed balloonMan whistlesfarandwee “Each spring, a gardening instinct, sure as the sap rising in the trees, stirs within us. We look about and decide to tame another little bit of ground.”Lewis Gannett “Spring is the time of plans and projects. And, as he came out into the farmyard, Levin, like a tree in spring that knows not what form will be taken by the young shoots and twigs imprisoned in its swelling buds, hardly knew what undertakings he was going to begin upon now in the farm…

April is the cruellest month, breedingLilacs out of the dead land, mixingMemory and desire, stirringDull roots with spring rain. — T.S. Eliot,“The Waste Land” There is a frenetic energy in the air. Here in Canada, the natural world is busy bursting, blooming, and birthing. A subversive violence belies the newborn lambs in pasture and the fresh asparagus growing in the garden. Animals emerge hungry from the meagreness of winter, while the human animal is impatient to put away the trappings of the coldest months of the year. Flora and fauna reach hungrily for the ever-warming sun. Like those famous boxing hares of spring, we are all a little March mad. Any excitement over a warm breeze here in the North is tempered by well-worn knowledge of the season’s vagaries. In…

Sir Pelham Grenville (or P.G.) Wodehouse was a preeminent humourist of the twentieth century. Born in Guildford, England, in 1881, Wodehouse wrote nearly exclusively of the world of the late Edwardian era. His firm command of the English language allowed him to use imagery, slang, and convoluted plots to great comic affect in his ninety-six books. We republish one of his earliest stories featuring the titular character that he is best remembered for. “Jeeves in the Springtime,” originally published in England in 1921 in The Strand, is reprinted here with the illustrations by T.D. Skidmore that accompanied the story’s first publication in America in Cosmopolitan. We hope it leaves you in agreement with Evelyn Waugh’s 1961 praise for Wodehouse: “Mr. Wodehouse’s idyllic world can never stale. He will continue to…

Dorothy Wordsworth Dorothy Wordsworth was an author, poet, and diarist. Although not a public author in her lifetime — she once admitted that she “should detest the idea of setting [her]self up as an author” — Wordsworth left behind a rich trove of writing that delights and surprises the reader who may have stumbled upon her through her famous brother, the poet William Wordsworth. Born on Christmas Day 1771, Dorothy was to live with William for the majority of her life, an arrangement that proved vital to both siblings. Dorothy’s journals provide insights into her influence on William’s writing, her own creative and intellectual output, and the interwoven nature of their friendship with Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The selections reprinted here are from Dorothy’s Alfoxden Journal, its title taken from the…

To what purpose, April, do you return again?Beauty is not enough.You can no longer quiet me with the rednessOf little leaves opening stickily.I know what I know.The sun is hot on my neck as I observeThe spikes of crocus.The smell of the earth is good.It is apparent that there is no death.But what does that signify?Not only under ground are the brains of menEaten by maggots.Life in itselfIs nothing,An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,AprilComes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.…

“Morning, Jeeves,” I said. “Good morning, sir,” said Jeeves. He put the good old cup of tea softly on the table by my bed, and I took a refreshing sip. Just right, as usual. Not too hot, not too sweet, not too weak, not too strong, not too much milk, and not a drop spilled in the saucer. A most amazing cove, Jeeves. So dashed competent in every respect. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. I mean to say, take just one small instance. Every other valet I’ve ever had used to barge into my room in the morning while I was still asleep, causing much misery; but Jeeves seems to know when I’m awake by a sort of telepathy. He always floats in with the cup…

But not on a shell, she starts,Archaic, for the sea.But on the first-found weedShe scuds the glitters,Noiselessly, like one more wave. She too is discontentAnd would have purple stuff upon her arms,Tired of the salty harbors,Eager for the brine and bellowingOf the high interiors of the sea. The wind speeds her on,Blowing upon her handsAnd watery back. She touches the clouds, where she goes,In the circle of her traverse of the sea. Yet this is meagre playIn the scrurry and water-shine,As her heels foam —Not as when the goldener nudeOf a later day Will go, like the centre of sea-green pomp,In an intenser calm,Scullion of fate,Across the spick torrent, ceaselessly,Upon her irretrievable way. “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”1984 by George Orwell…