February already! How the year hurries on. I tear January from my calendar with a sigh. The new year’s fresh supply of months is being consumed at an alarming rate. A few weeks ago there seemed time enough for everything, but now . . .
Candlemas (February 2) is the last of the Nativity celebrations. You can read more about its meaning and customs in last year’s post, Consumed by Love. For me it is a day to remember the preciousness of the time we are given. Like the people’s candles traditionally blessed in the Candlemas rite, the days to come are made to be used up. As I wrote last year, “a candle is a temporal thing, fulfilling its function of radiance and warmth at the cost of its own vanishing.”
For Robert Herrick, 17th-century poet and priest, our temporal condition was a recurring theme. “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may” is his best-known line, but his poem for Candlemas Eve is my favorite. The changing of seasonal decorations in houses and churches is an emblem of the human condition: Thus times do shift . . . new things succeed, as former things grow old.
DOWN with the rosemary and bays,
Down with the misletoe ;
Instead of holly, now up-raise
The greener box (for show).
The holly hitherto did sway ;
Let box now domineer
Until the dancing Easter day,
Or Easter’s eve appear.
Then youthful box which now hath grace
Your houses to renew ;
Grown old, surrender must his place
Unto the crisped yew.
When yew is out, then birch comes in,
And many flowers beside ;
Both of a fresh and fragrant kin
To honour Whitsuntide.
Green rushes, then, and sweetest bents,
With cooler oaken boughs,
Come in for comely ornaments
To re-adorn the house.
Thus times do shift ; each thing his turn does hold ;
New things succeed, as former things grow old.
Herrick’s poem was set to a Basque melody by Edgar Pittman (1865-1943). Here is a lovely version of it by English folksinger Kate Rusby.
The religious imagineer 
This is such a sweet meditation, especially in February. Advent’s end is a great time to welcome here in the Midwest USA the coming of spring, the natural world’s rebirth after the cold of winter. Kate Rusby’s rendition of Herrick’s poem is argument enough to include the music of that poem whenever we celebrate the coming of Christ.
I read this meditation after a crips morning walk to an editing screen, a quick check of any bicycles that may need tune-ups at the shop in my town, taking a few photos of the first baseball games in 40-degree temps and a 25-mph west wind and warming up by a toasty wood stove.
It’s past Candlemas (and Valentine’s Day,but it was a good day to hark back to this part of the religious calendar.
What a lovely comment. I enjoyed your walk! There is such sweetness in the transition toward spring. Even when the icy winds blow, buds and flowers are preparing their comeback.