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In the deepening spring of May, I had no choice but to recognize the trembling of my heart. It usually happened as the sun was going down. In the pale evening gloom, when the soft fragrance of magnolias hung in the air, my heart would swell without warning, and tremble, and lurch with a stab of pain. I would try clamping my eyes shut and gritting my teeth, and wait for it to pass. And it would pass –but slowly, taking its own time, and leaving a dull ache behind.” 
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

  

“At last came the golden month of the wild folk– honey-sweet May, when the birds come back, and the flowers come out, and the air is full of the sunrise scents and songs of the dawning year.” 
― Samuel Scoville Jr., Wild Folk

 

“And a bird overhead sang Follow,
And a bird to the right sang Here;
And the arch of the leaves was hollow,
And the meaning of May was clear.” 
― Algernon Charles Swinburne

 

“The month of May is the pleasant time; its face is beautiful; the blackbird sings his full song, the living wood is his holding, the cuckoos are singing and ever singing; there is a welcome before the brightness of the summer.” 
― Lady Gregory, “Finn, Son of Cumhal”

 

“And after winter folweth grene May.” 
― Geoffrey Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde

 

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“A great difference between May and Day is the M and D! Be a good Managing Director of your life each day in May.” 
― Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

  

“May and June.  Soft syllables, gentle names for the two best months in the garden year: cool, misty mornings gently burned away with a warming spring sun, followed by breezy afternoons and chilly nights.  The discussion of philosophy is over; it’s time for work to begin.”  
–  Peter Loewer  

 

“The world’s favorite season is the spring. 
All things seem possible in May.”
–  Edwin Way Teale

 

“You are as welcome as the flowers in May.”
–  Charles Macklin

 

“The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.”
–  Philip Larkin, The Trees

   

 

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“What is now the foliage moving? 
Air is still, and hush’d the breeze,
Sultriness, this fullness loving, 
Through the thicket, from the trees.
Now the eye at once gleams brightly, 
See! the infant band with mirth
Moves and dances nimbly, lightly,
As the morning gave it birth, 
Flutt’ring two and two o’er earth.”
–  Wolfgang Goethe, May 1815

 

“A little Madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the King.”
–  Emily Dickinson 

 

“May! Queen of blossoms,
   And fulfilling flowers,
With what pretty music
   Shall we charm the hours?
Wilt thou have pipe and reed,
Blown in the open mead?
Or to the lute give heed
   In the green bowers?”
–  Lord Edward Thurlow, May

 

“Spring is God’s way of saying, ‘One more time!’ “
–  Robert Orben  

 

Ah! my heart is weary waiting, Waiting for the May:
Waiting for the pleasant rambles
Where the fragrant hawthorn brambles,
With the woodbine alternating, Scent the dewy way;
Ah! my heart is weary, waiting, Waiting for the May.
― Denis Florence McCarthy, Summer Longings

 

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All honeysuckle photos are from pixabay.