Geerhardus Vos’s “Miracle of Spring”: A Translation and Commentary

Miracle of Spring

A strange thing has taken place
A labor overnight—
That by the thousands apace
New births brought forth to light.
Till now my yard was winter,
The wind turns south, I wing
Back home surprised and find there,
Snug in the cradle, Spring.

What breath of youth stirs the air,
What peach-cheek blush that glows!
Who can paint such shades so fair,
Softer than moss bestows?
What light so incandescent,
What webs of silver thread!
I gaze with new amazement:
Old miracles ahead.

Wind blew from southern mountains,
Bearing a cloud along
Pregnant with sounds like fountains,
The feathered folk in song.
The lay of the land they scour,
Season and path they know.
My newborn they sought after,
Found he in swaths aglow.

To them love’s joy-sensation
The babe in cradle lies—
A holy revelation
For pure and longing eyes.
Abounding with sweet envy,
They labor at their best
In pairs to weave so fitly
As cozy of a nest.

O Soul, so sharply sensing,
Eternal Spring so near,
Yet seldom in their coming
The free birds and their cheer.
Why in banishment persist,
with sighs and groans and tears,
From the land of good adrift,
Just over rampart peer.

The bird that soars through the skies,
Where Song of Songs is heard,
O see how in bliss he lies,
Beyond the gate, unstirred!
Bird of passage, forerunner,
With sacrament for food,
Soon you shall sing in wonder,
With paradise endued.[1]

Creation Poems with a Heavenly Crown Atop

Vos’s collection of creation poems, Spiegel der Natuur (Mirror of Nature), includes a section titled “Annulus Anni” in which he muses on the various cycles of time—the seasons of the year and the parts of the day.[2] It opens with “Dies Solis” (Sunday), followed by poems on the seasons, “Miraculum Veris” (Miracle of Spring), “Aestas” (Summer), “Autumnus” (Autumn), and “Mors Hyemis” (Winter’s Death), and then on the parts of the day, “Prima Lux” (First Light), “Meridies” (Midday), “Sub Noctem” (Twilight), “Nox” (Night), and “Nox Transiens” (Night Passing).

A key to interpreting these poems is to notice that Vos does not simply launch into the cycles of time whether blindly or neutrally. Rather, sitting atop these earthly cycles like a heavenly crown is his opening poem “Dies Solis.”[3] This poem is a meditation on Sunday, the Lord’s Day. It provides a religious and eschatological frame in which to view rightly God’s natural revelation—in this case, his preservation and government of the universe in its seasons and days (Gen. 8:22). We can briefly consider both structural elements—true religion and eschatology—that make up Vos’s frame in which he read God’s universe like a “beautiful book” in which spring was found (Belgic Confession article 2).

True religion frames all Vos’s creation poetry. It was unthinkable for him to consider the beauty of creation, including the organic connections of time that combine to tell a wonderful story of death and resurrection, apart from its Creator and Sustainer who is blessed forever. For this reason, it is better to refer to Vos’s work as creation poetry than mere nature poetry. What Robert Alter says of the Psalms, equally applies to Vos: “There is no real nature poetry in Psalms, because there is in the psalmist’s view no independent realm of nature, but there is creation poetry, which is to say, evocations of the natural world as the embodiment of the Creator’s ordering power and quickening presence.”[4] For Vos, the whole realm of nature exists to reflect, as in a mirror, the glory and power of the triune God. Hence, the title of Vos’s work: Spiegel der Natuur (Mirror of Nature). The created universe is a general, but nonetheless personal revelation of the triune God, that is meant to evoke true religion, that is, adoration and thanksgiving, from his image bearers.

Vos draws this religious and eschatological frame for creation especially from Isaiah, whom he deemed the “poet of salvation.”[5] He writes, “Isaiah himself . . . is responsive to every type of beauty and grandeur the world presents to his view. And yet he condemns the silver, the gold, the pleasant imagery, the fine apparel of the daughters of Zion. Beauty irreligiously appreciated detracts from the glory of Jehovah. The fulness of the earth belongs to Him, and to take any natural object, intended to reflect His divinity, for the purpose of making it serve the exaltation of the creature, is the essence of sin.”[6]

We see beauty religiously appreciated in “Miracle of Spring” as it brims with religious terminology: “miracle,” “holy revelation,” “Eternal Spring,” “Song of Songs,” “forerunner,” “sacrament,” and “paradise.” The strange and supernatural birth of spring, while enjoyable in itself, is not an end in itself. Its end is in God. For it is from him, through him, and to him. As God’s “holy revelation,” it is personal and foretells of the eternal spring that is to come. This leads us to the second element of Vos’s frame for the cycles of time.

“Dies Solis,” in its crowning position, also provides an eschatological frame for Vos’s philosophy of history. “The creation,” including its more dynamic elements like the seasons and parts of day, “waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God” (Rom. 8:19). For Vos, the Sabbath is “an expression of the eschatological principle on which the life of humanity has been constructed.”[7] This eschatological structure of history—“there is to be to the world-process a finale”—is the “fundamental scheme of Biblical history.”[8] It rejects the idea that we are caught up in an endless cycle of time or circle of life, without meaning or purpose. It reminds us that “life is not an aimless existence, that a goal lies beyond.”[9]

That goal that lies beyond makes Vos’s musings on the cycles of time to soar, like the birds blown in by southern winds, beyond the city walls into that heavenly country, full of freedom and cheer. This raises our existence within the cycles of time beyond monotony and meaningless. It stirs our eschatological longing and hope for that eternal spring.

Natural Theology

The crowning position of “Dies Solis” not only reveals Vos’s God-centered philosophy of history, framed by true religion and eschatology, but also his view of natural theology more broadly. In Biblical Theology, he writes,

Redemption in a supernatural way restores to fallen man also the normalcy and efficiency of his cognition of God in the sphere of nature. How true this is may be seen from the fact that the best system of Theism, i.e. Natural Theology, has not been produced from the sphere of heathenism, however splendidly endowed in the cultivation of philosophy, but from Christian sources. When we produce a system of natural knowledge of God, and in doing so profess to rely exclusively on the resources of reason, this is, of course, formally correct, but it remains an open question whether we should have been able to produce such a thing with the degree of excellence we succeed in imparting to it, had not our minds in the natural exercise of their faculties stood under the correcting influence of redemptive grace.[10]

Vos recognizes other systems of theism, like pantheism, but classifies natural theology as a distinctly Christian discipline. It may be used apologetically, “for refuting those who have rejected the supernatural revelation of God,”[11] but it is not a common project between believers and unbelievers. Rather, it is produced, as he says, by those whose minds in their natural exercise of their faculties stand under “the correcting influence of redemptive grace.” It is the project of those who have accepted the supernatural revelation of God. And who may that be but the Christian?

So, the arguments of natural theology may function apologetically not because of a shared ability to reason rightly but because of the deeper point of contact in the sensus divinitatis. Vos casts this in Romantic categories in his early lectures on natural theology, saying, “The idea of God can be considered an immediate testimony which God has given in us of His own existence. It is thus an innate idea and is produced by the Holy Spirit, specifically by the common grace of the Holy Spirit.”[12] Common grace and the internal revelatory activity of the Holy Spirit are central to Vos’s natural theology.

But Vos’s aim in his creation poetry seems less apologetic and more worshipful, which is another use of natural theology that he lists. Citing Psalm 104, and so grounding it in special revelation, he states, “[Natural theology] teaches us to adore the wisdom of God in nature, His ways and His works.”[13]

The wisdom of God in nature that we are to adore is not only evident in the individual seasons or parts of the day themselves but also in their organic connections, like in the way spring’s new life emerges from winter’s death. Such wisdom of God in nature is intended to tell a deeper, truer story of death and resurrection to afford those with eyes to see and ears to hear hope of eternal life. That story is the story of the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, “the beginning, the firstborn from the dead” (Col. 1:18).

Miracle of Spring

We see the dual frame of eschatological hope and true religious desire in the first of Vos’s season poems, “Miracle of Spring.” We have already made some brief observations in this regard but can add a few more here.

Vos opens the poem by employing a common literary device of personifying spring as a newborn. His once cold and lifeless yard now cradles spring like a child. It is the season of new life, the regeneration of all things (Matt. 19:28). There is something strange about spring’s birth, a birth in which thousands of births have been brought forth as if overnight. Vos captures how spring’s arrival is no mere mechanical process, the result of measurable and impersonal laws, but the supernatural and personal appearance of new life; indeed, it is a miracle, a holy revelation. As such, it functions like a religious mirror in which the beauty of God shines for his glory and the enjoyment of his creatures.

The poem continues with the arrival of the wind, a significant agent also in many of his creation poems, which may symbolize the work of the Holy Spirit. It carries along a cloud full of songs from the feathered folk. Vos considers the birds, as Jesus had directed his people to do (Matt. 6:26), to learn what a proper response to the “holy revelation” of God in spring is. Like wisemen of old, the feathered folk come to worship the babe who in the cradle lies. The birds are stirred to weave a nest to imitate the warmth and coziness of the spring. Their labor is not only for their own sake but ultimately for glory of God.

But it is the freedom and cheer of the birds who wing beyond the city gate that ultimately preaches to the soul. The surprising and supernatural birth of spring thus meets not only the birds of the air but the soul of the poet. The soul is directly addressed in the penultimate stanza for it senses that eternal spring is near. Under the correcting influence of redemptive grace, not only is the poet reminded of God’s general revelation outside of himself in nature but also inside of himself, in his soul. For in his “heart are the highways to Zion” (Ps. 84:5).

Yet, like an exile peering over city walls, his soul already sees its home but does not yet enter. This exilic motif may be understood experientially or redemptive-historically. Experientially, it speaks of the weakness of the poet’s soul to rise to heavenly heights to worship God as he deserves, to seek the things that are above. Redemptive-historically, it tells of the tension of the already-not yet of eternal life. The Heidelberg Catechism Q&A 58 captures this tension: “Even as I already now experience in my heart the beginning of eternal joy, so after this life I will have perfect blessedness such as no eye has seen, no ear has heard, no heart has ever imagined: a blessedness in which to praise God eternally.” The birds are eschatological guides into true religion. They soar ahead over the city walls into the place where the Song of Songs is heard. In another poem, “The Source of Song,” Vos writes,

O love, to me thou art and makest song,
And couldst not any make without being all.
Thy smiles, thy words, thy gestures, as we walk along,
Soft-touching summer raindrops on my heartstrings fall,
Rendering their every utterance musical.
Thou art in this like God, whose very bliss
Around Him one vast sea of music is,
Whence all the melody-filled fountains spring,
That in the creature’s mouth from bird to Angel sing.[14]

The whole of creation, in heaven and on earth, joins in singing the praises of God, who in his love is the source of song. So, to hear the birds is to hear the same song that fills the heavens.

All of this suggests that the place of the Song of Songs is that heavenly country the saints have greeted from afar, the “paradise” of God. It is most properly the song of the “city that is to come” (Heb. 13:14). The birds are, therefore, forerunners and heralds of God’s eschatological promise of an eternal spring when his blood-bought people will rise from death into his warm embrace in a world without end. Amen, amen.

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[1] Geerhardus Vos, “Miraculum Veris,” in Spiegel der Natuur en Lyrica Anglica (Princeton, NJ: Geerhardus Vos, 1927), 40. This translation is my own; I have tried to maintain the rhyme scheme and meter of the original Dutch.

[2] Geerhardus Vos, Spiegel der Natuur en Lyrica Anglica (Princeton, NJ: Geerhardus Vos, 1927).

[3] Geerhardus Vos’s poem “Dies Solis” is translated by and commented on by Daniel Ragusa: “Bathed in a Sea of Light: Vos’s Lord’s Day Poem,” September 3, 2020, https://reformedforum.org/vos-lords-day-poem/

[4] Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Poetry (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2011), 146.

[5] Geerhardus Vos, “Jesaja,” in Spiegel der Genade (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1922), 33. Heildichter (Dutch) means “poet of salvation,” or more literally “salvation-poet.”

[6] Geerhardus Vos, “Some Doctrinal Features of the Early Prophesies of Isaiah,” in Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation: The Shorter Writings of Geerhardus Vos, ed. Richard B. Gaffin Jr. (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2001), 282.

[7] Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2003), 140.

[8] Vos, Biblical Theology, 140.

[9] Vos, Biblical Theology, 140.

[10] Vos, Biblical Theology, 20. See also Vos, Natural Theology, trans. Albert Gootjes (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2022), 8, 10, 13–14.

[11] Vos, Natural Theology, 5.

[12] Vos, Natural Theology, 45.

[13] Vos, Natural Theology, 5.

[14] Geerhardus Vos, Charis: English Verses (Princeton, NJ: Geerhardus Vos, 1931), 23.