I cannot hold my peace, John Keats;
There never was a spring like this;
It is an echo, that repeats
My last year's song and next year's bliss.
I know, in spite of all men say
Of Beauty, you have felt her most.
Yea, even in your grave her way
Is laid. Poor, troubled, lyric ghost,
Spring never was so fair and dear
As Beauty makes her seem this year.
[ . . .]
And you and I, shall we lie still,
John Keats, while Beauty summons us?
Somehow I feel your sensitive will
Is pulsing up some tremulous
Sap road of a maple tree, whose leaves
Grow music as they grow, since your
Wild voice is in them, a harp that grieves
For life that opens death's dark door.
Though dust, your fingers still can push
The Vision Splendid to a birth,
Though now they work as grass in the hush
Of the night on the broad sweet page of the earth.
[ . . .]
—Countee Cullen, from "To John Keats, Poet. At Spring Time"
(Spring 1924)

Gardening: Sacred Act of Spring

From the Collected Works of Rudolf Steiner

Universe, Earth, Human Being
Their Relationship to Egyptian Myths and Modern Civilization
Translated revised by Matthew Barton
11 lectures, Stuttgart, August 1908 (CW 105)
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We have said that the earth is the planet of love, that love will be truly developed only upon the earth. It is bred or developed here; and by participating in humankind the gods will also come to know love, though in another sense it is they who bestow it.

It is difficult to picture this. It is entirely possible for one being to impart a gift to another yet only come to know this gift through the other. Picture to yourselves an exceedingly rich person who has never known anything but riches, nor ever experienced the deep satisfaction of soul which results from charity. Picture this person now as doing something good; he gives to the poor. The gift calls forth great thankfulness in the soul of the needy individual; this feeling of gratitude is at the same time a gift; it would never have existed if the rich person had not first given. He is the originator of the feeling of gratitude, although he does not himself feel it, and is only acquainted with it through its reflection, which streams back to him from the person in whom he roused it.

It is approximately in this way that the gift of love is imparted to the human being by the gods. They have progressed so far that they are able to kindle love in human beings, who thus become able to learn and acquire it; but the gods only learn to know it as a reality through humankind.

—Rudolf Steiner, from a lecture of August 13, 1908, in Universe, Earth, Human Being: In Their Relation to Egyptian Myths and Modern Civilization (CW105)