Christopher Morley: The Poet of Spring and Wit

May 5, 1890

The American journalist, novelist, essayist, and poet Christopher Morley was born.

Morley was a man of boundless curiosity — producing plays, giving lectures, and publishing essays by the dozen. Yet it is his sparkling wit and tender reflections on life that have secured him a place in the gardener’s heart.

On the subject of marriage, Morley once quipped:

“The trouble with wedlock is that there's not enough wed and too much lock.”

And when it came to the sorrows of the human heart, he reached for the weather to explain what words often cannot:

“Heavy hearts, like heavy clouds in the sky, are best relieved by the letting of a little water.”

But perhaps his loveliest turn of phrase comes in praise of spring:

“April prepares her green traffic light, and the world thinks: Go.”

What gardener has not felt that exact surge — that unmistakable moment when the tulips open, the lilacs perfume the air, and the entire earth seems to hum with permission to grow? In that single line, Morley captures the gardener’s eternal invitation: to step outside, to take up the spade, and to greet the season with joy.

Morley’s words remind us that gardens are not only places of beauty but also reservoirs of wit, wisdom, and consolation. In every green traffic light of April, he bids us press forward with delight — for life, like spring, waits for no one.