Spring Fever

One of my favorite jazz songs of all time (as sung by Sarah Vaughn) perfectly describes my mood this week: I'm as restless as a willow in a wind storm, I'm as jumpy as a puppet on a string, I'd say that I had Spring Fever; but I know it isn't Spring. I am starry eyed and vaguely discontented, like a nightengale without a song to sing. Oh, why should I have Spring Fever, when it isn't even Spring?
It is most unfair when other people take my feelings from me and put them to music. Even...before I was born. Yeah. I know. So okay, it's not an original idea. However, I do feel that poetry and lyrics are some of the perfectest (I love making up words!) forms of expression for those otherwise unexplainable emotions or humours that would go unexplained without the help of people like George and Ira Gershwin, or Alfred Tennyson, or Emily Dickinson. And so, in the absence of further logical explanation, I'm just going to conclude my thoughts with a few of my favorites.

It's not the pale moon that delights me, that thrills and delights me,
Oh no. It's just the nearness of you.
It isn't your sweet conversation that brings this sensation,
Oh no, it's just the nearness of you.
-Hoagland Carmichael

However, my heart and head rule my emotions jointly,
And they are not to be trifled with,
So I suggest my friend that you tread lightly,
Because fury of woman scorned is not a myth.

'O miracle of women,' said the book,
O noble heart who, being strait-besieged
By this wild king to force her to his wish,
Nor bent, nor broke, nor shunned a soldier's death,
But now when all was lost or seemed as lost--
Her stature more than mortal in the burst
Of sunrise, her arm lifted, eyes on fire--
Brake with a blast of trumpets from the gate,
And, falling on them like a thunderbolt,
She trampled some beneath her horses' heels,
And some were whelmed with missiles of the wall,
And some were pushed with lances from the rock,
And part were drowned within the whirling brook:
O miracle of noble womanhood!'
-Lord Tennyson's the Princess
(This is what I do to men who mess with me)

But someday, one will come who will brave the thorns and thunder,
Taking only that which is most prized; my heart.
Unlike others, mistaking beauty wealth and conquest for true plunder,
He, being worthy, will receive the better part.

Don't ever try to change me,
I've broken hearts for less
And please don't rearrange me,
I'm the me that I like best
I'll alter if you want me to,
Those things that don't define me
All you really need to do
My love, is ask me kindly.
(Or, as Emily would say...)

ALTER? When the hills do.
Falter? When the sun
Question if his glory
Be the perfect one.
Surfeit? When the daffodil
Doth of the dew:
Even as herself, O friend!
I will of you!
-Emily Dickinson