David Attenborough TV - Miss Read - Bill Veeck - Orbit: Earth’s Extraordinary Journey TV - William Shakespeare - Julian Barnes - Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 - II Timothy 4:2 - Samuel Taylor Coleridge - James Russell Lowell - Percy Bysshe Shelley - Alfred Lord Tennyson - Edna St Vincent Millay - John Steinbeck - Charles Dickens - Lynne Reid Banks - Ernest Hemingway - A Year on Planet Earth TV -
In the lands between the Arctic Circle and the Tropics each year brings a great change between winter and summer. David Attenborough, The Living Planet: The Northern Forests III, BBC 1984
The Earth as it makes its annual journey round the sun spins on a tilted axis, and it’s this tilt that creates the seasons. David Attenborough, Planet Earth: Pole to Pole, BBC 2006
The power of the Sun drives the seasons transforming our planet. Vast movements of ocean and air currents bring dramatic change throughout the year. David Attenborough, Nature’s Great Events, BBC 2009
How lucky country children are in these natural delights that lie ready to their hand! Every season and every plant offers changing joys. As they meander along the lane that leads to our school all kinds of natural toys present themselves for their diversion. The seedpods of stitchwort hang ready for delightful popping between thumb and finger, and later the bladder campion offers a larger, if less crisp, globe to burst. In the autumn, acorns, beechnuts, and conkers bedizen their path, with all their manifold possibilities of fun. In the summer, there is an assortment of honeys to be sucked from bindweed flowers, held fragile and fragrant to hungry lips, and the tiny funnels of honeysuckle and clover blossoms to taste. Miss Read, Village Diary
There are only two seasons – Winter and Baseball. Bill Veeck
If the Earth wasn’t tilted, every day would be like the Equinox. Orbit: Earth’s Extraordinary Journey III, BBC 2012
Thus sometimes hath the brightest day a cloud;
And after summer evermore succeeds
Barren winter, with his wrathful nipping cold;
So cares and joy abound as seasons fleet. William Shakespeare, The First Part of the Contention II Henry VI II iv 1-4, Gloucester
For never-resting time leads summer on
To hideous winter, and confounds him there. William Shakespeare, Sonnet 5
When you’re young you prefer the vulgar months, the fullness of the seasons. As you grow older you learn to like the in-between times, the months that can’t make up their minds. Perhaps it’s a way of admitting that things can’t ever bear the same certainty again. Julian Barnes, Flaubert’s Parrot
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace. Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
Be instant in season, out of season. II Timothy 4:2
Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch
Smokes in the sunthaw; whether the eve-drops fall,
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet moon. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Frost at Midnight, 1798
Our seasons have no fixed returns,
Without our will they come and go;
At noon our sudden summer burns,
Ere sunset all is snow. James Russell Lowell
January grey is here,
Like a sexton by her grave;
February bears the bier,
March with grief doth howl and rave,
And April weeps – but, O ye hours!
Follow with May’s fairest flowers. Percy Bysshe Shelley, Dirge for the Year
O Spring, of hope and love and youth and gladness
Wind-wingéd emblem! brightest, best and fairest!
Whence comest thou, when, with dark Winter’s sadness
The tears that fade in sunny smiles thou sharest?
Sister of joy! thou art the child who wearest
Thy mother’s dying smile, tender and sweet;
Thy mother Autumn, for whose grave thou bearest
Fresh flowers, and beams like flowers, with gentle feet,
Disturbing not the leaves which are her winding sheet. Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Revolt of Islam
O Wild West Wind, though breath of Autumn’s being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing ...
Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams ...
The triumph of the prophecy! O, Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind. Percy Bysshe Shelley 1792-1822, Ode to the West Wind
Ah! well away!
Seasons flower and fade. Alfred Lord Tennyson, Every Day Hath Its Night
I know I am but summer to your heart, and not the full four seasons of the year. Edna St Vincent Millay
What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness. John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America
It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade. Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
The spring can be more painful than any other time of the year. Summer is lazy and indifferent. Autumn is demanding and invigorating. Winter is numb and self-contained, but spring has none of the palliatives. Every emotional nerve is close to the surface. Every sound and sight, every touch of the air is a summons to feel, to open your doors, to let life possess you and do what it likes with you. Lynne Reid Banks, The L-Shaped Room
With so many trees in the city, you could see the spring coming each day until a night of warm wind would bring it suddenly in one morning. Sometimes the heavy cold rains would beat it back so that it would seem that it would never come and that you were losing a season out of your life. This was the only truly sad time in Paris because it was unnatural. You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintry light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person had died for no reason.
In those days, though, the spring always came finally but it was frightening that it had nearly failed. Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
It’s hard to describe how still it is on a glacier surrounded by a fresh blanket on snow. A Year on Planet Earth I: Winter, ITV 2023
Svalbard, Arctic Circle: By late October most animals have already fled south … The northern hemisphere is tilted as far away from the sun as it can. ibid.
But the beginning of March we in the north are turning towards the north. And winter snow begins to melt. A Year on Planet Earth II: Spring
East Africa: The Great Migration won’t return until summer. ibid.
The sun … fuels extraordinary change. And transforms the lives of all it shines upon. Now as we enter our summer we begin to feel its full force. A Year on Planet Earth III: Summer