It is a truth universally acknowledged that Germans have a word for everything.

England is currently enjoying the finest spring weather—warm sunshine flooding over green grass, already awash with blooms—yet people are commonly expressing feelings of fatigue. One might blame the ongoing pandemic or the current state of the world for this symptom—but it is certainly strange to feel at odds with the energy of the natural world, bursting with new life and vitality at this time of year.

In expressing this thought to my friend, a German native and teacher from East Berlin, she naturally confirmed that Germans have a word for this: Frühjahrsmüdigkeit, which literally means ‘spring tiredness’ (G. der Frühling ‘spring’ + Die Müdigkeit ‘tiredness’). German words often adopt a portmanteau or compound structure, combining concepts into single, practical expressions of complex ideas. In this case, ‘spring tiredness’ has potentially valid scientific explanations, as the body’s biological reaction to allergies or changes in light, making it a ‘reverse’ seasonal affective disorder. Either way, the spring is commonly known to elicit a lethargic and even melancholic response, as the German word articulates.

With its famous line, ‘April is the cruellest month’, TS Eliot’s The Waste Land (1922) speaks to the irony of springtime evoking malaise and even darker feelings in people, but he is not the only one. In this collection of Ten beautiful spring poems, each one presents a complex emotional response to the season.

As Wordsworth muses, in his lyrical ballad of 1798, the natural splendour of spring can make one ‘lament / What man has made of man?’ It begs the question of what came first—the season or the sadness? …

A mystery far too soporific to solve.

Lines Written in Early Spring
By William Wordsworth

I heard a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sate reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran;
And much it grieved my heart to think
What man has made of man.

Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,
The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;
And ’tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.

The birds around me hopped and played,
Their thoughts I cannot measure:—
But the least motion which they made
It seemed a thrill of pleasure.

The budding twigs spread out their fan,
To catch the breezy air;
And I must think, do all I can,
That there was pleasure there.

If this belief from heaven be sent,
If such be Nature’s holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?