NOTHING is so beautiful as spring, wrote the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, “when weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush”.

Looking at photographer Garry Atkinson’s photographs today, it is not hard to agree.

Spring, naturally enough, has inspired poets down the ages. It is a season that puts “a spirit of youth in every thing,” says Shakespeare, when neither “the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell of different flowers in odour and in hue” could make him wish for summer instead.

Christina Rossetti imagines herself sitting quiet in a wood, “where in the whitethorn singeth a thrush, and a robin sings in the holly-bush. Full of fresh scents are the budding boughs, arching high over a cool green house”.

Shakespeare, being Shakespeare, sees a more earthy side to spring, too. It is the season when “maidens bleach their summer smocks”, and “the cuckoo then, on every tree, mocks married men”.

We have had to wait longer than usual for this spring, so let’s enjoy it while we can. Especially as we know it won’t last.

Because that’s the other thing about spring: all too soon its freshness and promise give way to the heat and dust of summer, and then to autumn’s decay.

Now there’s a thought to haunt you as you go to the polling station today.