Poetry, CIE Literature, Spring, the Sweet Spring, Nashe

1. Spring, the Sweet Spring
What connotations could spring have? E.g Winter – death,
misery, depression.
If spring was a part of your life, what would it represent?
If you related spring to a stage of love, what would it represent?

2. Tone
Joy and excitement – celebrating the end of
the cold and death and the arrival of warmth
and opportunity.
There is also a certain nostalgia too it, with
the lingering on the thoughts with pausing in
virtually every line.
Spring, the sweet spring, is the year’s pleasant king,
Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in ring,
Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing:
Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-wee, to-witta-woo!
The palm and may make country houses gay,
Lambs frisk and play, the shepherds pipe all day,
And we hear aye birds tune this merry lay:
Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-wee, to-witta-woo!
The fields breathe sweet, the daisies kiss our feet,
Young lovers meet, old wives a-sunning sit,
In every street these tunes our ears do greet:
Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-wee, to-witta-woo!
Spring, the sweet spring!
Thomas Nashe (1567-1601)

3. Context
Thomas Nashe (1567-1601)
Nashe is most famous as a pamphleteer. an odd career that now would see him
working for some Chinese restaurant or another. In Elizabethan times a pamphleteer
was a bit more prominent as pamphlets were one of the most effective ways to
spread ideas or news across the country. Nashe’s pamphlets were apparently pretty
controversial in theme and his poetry also caused a bit of a stir, see if you can work
out why!:
And make me happie, stealing by degrees. First bare hir legs, then creepe up to her
knees …
“Unhappyie me,” quoth she, “and wilt not stand? Com, let me rubb and chafe it with my
hand!”
Do you really need to know this? No, but has it made you smile? No? Well, on with the
relevant stuff then!
This is a song from Thomas Nashe’s 1600 play Summer’s Last Will and Testaments,
which was seen as an intellectual masterpiece (according to Wikipedia!). It is a
pastoral play where the four seasons are personified and examined through different
characters.
Stop! Don’t rush out to read it or to the nearest performance – let’s just deal with the
poem.

4. Spring, the Sweet Spring
Pause and repetition within the title indicates fondness for this
season. Gentle and nostalgic as this really references our youth.
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, pu-wee, to-witta-woo!
Elevating season by comparing it to royalty – contrast with
summer which is described as ‘king of the world’ in the same
piece of work. Summer may be higher, but ‘pleasant king’ seems
calmer, more peaceful and happier. Stress free king?
Imagery – a scene of
rejoicing and
beauty. As if all
these images are
joining together to
rejoice the end of
winter.
Weather is just right – not
too hot or cold.
Repeated onomatopoeia
to represent various bird
song – reinforce cheery,
sing song mood.

5. In the opening stanza Spring is crowned ‘the year’s
pleasant king’, contrasted with Summer which is
seen as ‘king of the world’. This suggests to me that
while summer is rich, ripe and powerful, while
Spring is not as powerful it is the most joyous and
enjoyable time of year.
Remember where this poem comes from – it is
meant to represent human life. Thus his affection
for the season is his way of communicating the joys
of the season.
‘Blooms’ suggest nature is at its most fresh and
beautiful stage; ‘maids’ dancing show that people
are joyful and celebrating the end of the cold of
Winter (it is still cold, but it ‘doth not sting’ – chilly
rather than unpleasant weather); and ‘pretty birds’
singing creates an idea of optimism and
contentment for all elements of this pastoral world.
This all seems focused on visual imagery.

6. The palm and may make country houses gay,
Lambs frisk and play, the shepherds pipe all day,
And we hear aye birds tune this merry lay:
Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-wee, to-witta-woo!
Palm and may are spring
festivals. Spring is party
month and everyone seems
to be joyful, happy, musical
and playful. The end of the
struggle against winter.
All nature shares
man’s joy. United
rural scene of
celebration. Youth
full of excitement
and energy.
If the country
house represents
the wealthy, then
the shepherds
represent the
rural poor. Again
all united in
celebration. They
add music to the
party.
Birds singing a recurring
image. Auditory imagery
dominates this second
stanza.
Country houses were the
centres of rural communities
and in spring everyone is
merry.

7. Spring festivals – ‘palm and may’ – mean that the
countryside seemed to be filled with joy in stanza
two and new born lambs ‘frisk and play’ conveying
a sense of energy, excitement and fresh spirit for
everyone. Those birds keep on chirping happily and
now are joined by shepherds becoming musically
inspired too. Now we are being bombarded with
the sounds of merriment and enjoyment.

8. The fields breathe sweet, the daisies kiss our feet,
Young lovers meet, old wives a-sunning sit,
In every street these tunes our ears do greet:
Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-wee, to-witta-woo!
Spring, the sweet spring!
From the visual imagery in
stanza one, the auditory in
stanza two, to the smells of
stanza three. Fresh grass and
simple country flowers give
us a fresh scent rather than
an overpowering perfume.
First clear
connection with
spring and youth.
Young lovers
represent romance.
Connects with the
youthful excitement
and joy of all our
images.
I take this image
to be one of
nostalgia. Old
wives sitting out
in the gentle
spring and
remembering
their youth.
Everyone, everything and
everywhere is celebrating.
Youth, excitement and
opportunity.
‘Kiss’ helps emphasise the
gentleness of this season.
Returns to the opening
line, but this time
delivered alone and with
an exclamation mark. As if
in conclusion to his
pleasant reminiscence.

9. Finally, we ‘breathe sweet’ scents of nature being
reborn through fresh fields and daisies. This stanza
also then makes a direct comparison between the
season and love, tying Spring to when ‘young lovers
meet’ and thus romance, the excitement of
possibility and maybe even fertility. It concludes
with an idea that the joy of Spring is not an isolated
thing, but ‘every street’ seems alive with the music
and joy of the season.

10. Language and techniques
Here it is all about imagery.
Don’t be fooled into thinking that imagery is just about making you
imagine how something looks, but it is about immersing you into the
writer/poet’s world.
Rich natural visuals of the ‘blooms’ on the trees, symbolising rebirth
and beauty, are met with joyous human emotion expressed through
the ‘maids [who] dance’ and the sounds of ‘shepherds pip[ing]‘ and
birds singing showing the harmony between all aspects of the
countryside. We are even challenged to imagine the freshness of the
air when the ‘fields breathe sweet’.
Mention the repetition of the final line in each stanza. Onomatopoeia
makes us almost sing in the voices of the different birds (cuckoo,
nightingale, lapwing and owl) as we read the poem and conveys the
joy that this poem expresses throughout and ties to the season.
You’ll sound very clever if you can also integrate sensible comment
about the use of pathetic fallacy. ‘Young lovers meet’ ties the idea of
the natural freshness and excitement of Spring with the first emotions
of love or romance.

11. Structure
Rhyming is a big thing here and it’s pretty
easy to explain why.
You’ll notice that all the lines of each stanza,
bar the last line, rhyme (sit is a half-
rhyme…)! So simple. You may not have
noticed that this rhyme also appears
somewhere else in most lines:
Stanza 1 – spring, king, thing, ring, sting, sing
Stanza 2 – may, gay, play, day, aye (I’m fairly
sure it’s meant to be pronounced in the same
way here), lay
Stanza 3 – sweet, feet, meet, sit (hmmm…),
street, greet
Why? Remember this was originally a song
in a play, so this simple rhyme helps with
rhythm and to achieve a sing songy
progression that is as cheerful as the content
being covered.
The repetition of the bird song both acts as a
chorus and it fills the song/poem with joyful
chirping the whole way through.
Spring, the sweet spring, is the year’s pleasant king,
Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in ring,
Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing:
Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-wee, to-witta-woo!
The palm and may make country houses gay,
Lambs frisk and play, the shepherds pipe all day,
And we hear aye birds tune this merry lay:
Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-wee, to-witta-woo!
The fields breathe sweet, the daisies kiss our feet,
Young lovers meet, old wives a-sunning sit,
In every street these tunes our ears do greet:
Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-wee, to-witta-woo!
Spring, the sweet spring!
Thomas Nashe (1567-1601)

12. Tone
Joy, contentment and excitement –
celebrating the end of the cold and death and
the arrival of warmth and opportunity.
There is also a certain nostalgia too it, with
the lingering on the thoughts with pausing in
virtually every line.
Themes
Obviously nature, but also romantic love and
mortality. Mortality may seem a bit strange,
but there is a reflection on death through the
sheer unadulterated joy of the season,
without any worries or cares.
Spring, the sweet spring, is the year’s pleasant king,
Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in ring,
Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing:
Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-wee, to-witta-woo!
The palm and may make country houses gay,
Lambs frisk and play, the shepherds pipe all day,
And we hear aye birds tune this merry lay:
Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-wee, to-witta-woo!
The fields breathe sweet, the daisies kiss our feet,
Young lovers meet, old wives a-sunning sit,
In every street these tunes our ears do greet:
Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-wee, to-witta-woo!
Spring, the sweet spring!
Thomas Nashe (1567-1601)