“In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the burnish’d dove;
In the Spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.”

Often named among the nation’s favourite poets, Alfred Tennyson was appointed as Poet Laureate of Great Britain & Ireland in 1850, following on from William Wordsworth. The lines above are from his masterwork ‘Locksley Hall’. The poem is about an unnamed soldier travelling with a small military unit who lets his company travel on ahead while he remains at a place which turns out to be the Locksley Hall of the poem’s title. This was where the soldier spent his childhood, and the poem has the soldier struggling to deal with feelings from his childhood, especially in the light of the frustration of his current occupation.

The second of the two lines is the one most often quoted from the poem, but it is nearly always mentioned out of context. The poem is not a love poem – but this one line could well give the impression that it is.

As we move from winter to spring, our thoughts might well turn to new beginnings as nature brings forth new life. They might also turn to love. But just as love in Tennyson’s poem is but one part, so is love just one part of all of our lives.

With the memory of the violent deaths both in Paris and in Nigeria last year still fresh in our minds, love might well be something that is difficult to see in our world. But near the beginning of February we begin the season of Lent, and start to prepare ourselves for Easter. Easter is a story about Jesus death and resurrection, and it’s a story that we go on telling despite, or maybe because, of all that goes on in our world. Because the story of Jesus is a story of God’s great love.

In the face of suffering, it still has relevance, because the love of God is the only way we can make sense of what goes on in our world.

 

(February 2016)