_Turn O’ The Year_
This is the time when bit by bit
The days begin to lengthen sweet
And every minute gained is joy--
And love stirs in the heart of a boy.
This is the time the sun, of late
Content to lie abed till eight,
Lifts up betimes his sleepy head--
And love stirs in the heart of a maid.
This is the time we dock the night
Of a whole hour of candlelight;
When song of linnet and thrush is heard--
And love stirs in the heart of a bird.
This is the time when sword-blades green,
With gold and purple damascene,
Pierce the brown crocus-bed a-row--
And love stirs in a heart I know.
_Katharine Tynan_
_April Music_
The lyric sound of laughter
Fills all the April hills,
The joy-song of the crocus,
The mirth of daffodils.
They ring their golden changes
Through all the azure vales;
The sunny cowslips answer,
Athwart the reedy swales.
Far down the woodland aisleways
The trillium’s voice is heard;
The little wavering wind-flowers
Join in with jocund word.
The white cry of the dogwood
Mounts up against the sky;
The breath of violet music
Upon the breeze goes by.
Give me to hear, O April,
These choristers of thine
Calling across the distance
Serene and hyaline;
To clear my clouded vision
Bedimmed and dulled so long,
And heal my aching spirit
With fragrance that is song!
_Clinton Scollard_
_The Year’s Awakening_
How do you know that the pilgrim track
Along the belting zodiac
Swept by the sun in his seeming rounds
Is traced by now to the Fishes’ bounds
And into the Ram, when weeks of cloud
Have wrapt the sky in a clammy shroud,
And never as yet a tinct of spring
Has shown in the Earth’s apparelling;
Oh, vespering bird, how do you know,
How do you know?
How do you know, deep underground,
Hid in your bed from sight and sound,
Without a turn in temperature,
With weather life can scarce endure,
That light has won a fraction’s strength,
And day put on some moments’ length,
Whereof in merest rote will come,
Weeks hence, mild airs that do not numb;
Oh, crocus root, how do you know,
How do you know?
_Thomas Hardy_
_Spring’s Answer_
I heard God calling
And I came,
His Sun signalled me
With its flame.
His Wind called me
With its song.
His Birds said they had been waiting
Over long.
His little Brooks ran tumbling
Down the hills,
Luring me with laughter
Of rocky rills.
His Grasses, yellow-green,
Standing in the sun,
Held up their fingers
For me to come.
Heart of Oak and heart of Pine
Beat a faint tattoo--
Flowing sap in bole and bud
Climbing up anew.
Till at last the summons
Set my heart aflame--
I heard God calling,
And I came!
_Edwin Osgood Grover_
_Morning Song_
The grass is taller, greener,
And the birds more loud;
The flowers open freshly
To a sky of cloud.
And man awakens gladly
In a world that’s good,
And thrills to some new beauty
Not quite understood.
Though all the world is clouded
It’s a gray delight--
For spring is swelling, swelling,
And it rained last night.
_Lancaster Pollard_
_April Weather_
Soon, ah, soon the April weather
With the sunshine at the door,
And the mellow melting rain-wind
Sweeping from the South once more.
Soon the rosy maples budding,
And the willows putting forth,
Misty crimson and soft yellow
In the valleys of the North.
Soon the hazy purple distance,
Where the cabined heart takes wing,
Eager for the old migration
In the magic of the spring.
Soon, ah, soon the budding windflowers
Through the forest white and frail,
And the odorous wild cherry
Gleaming in her ghostly veil.
Soon, about the waking uplands
The hepaticas in blue,--
Children of the first warm sunlight
In their sober Quaker hue,--
All our shining little sisters
Of the forest and the field,
Lifting up their quiet faces
With the secret half revealed.
Soon across the folding twilight
Of the round earth hushed to hear,
The first robin at his vespers
Calling far, serene and clear.
Soon the waking and the summons,
Starting sap in bole and blade,
And the bubbling marshy whisper
Seeping up through bog and glade.
Soon the frogs in silver chorus
Through the night, from marsh and swale,
Blowing in their tiny oboes
All the joy that shall not fail,--
Passing up the old earth rapture
By a thousand streams and rills,
From the red Virginian valleys
To the blue Canadian hills.
Soon, ah, soon the splendid impulse,
Nomad longing, vagrant whim,
When a man’s false angels vanish
And the truth comes back to him.
Soon the majesty, the vision,
And the old unfaltering dream,
Faith to follow, strength to stablish,
Will to venture and to seem;
All the radiance, the glamour,
The expectancy and poise,
Of this ancient life renewing
Its temerities and joys.
Soon the immemorial magic
Of the young Aprilian moon,
And the wonder of thy friendship
In the twilight--soon, ah, soon!
_Bliss Carman_
_The Runaway_
What are you doing, little day-moon,
Over the April hill?
What are you doing, up so soon,
Climbing the sky with silver shoon?
What are you doing at half-past noon,
Slipping along so still?
Are you so eager, the heights unwon,
That you cannot wait,
But, unheeding of wind and sun,
Out of your nest of night must run,
Up where the day is far from done,
Shy little shadow-mate?
Up and away then--with young mists
Tripping, along the blue!
Dance and dally and promise trysts
Unto each that around you lists;
For, little moon, not a one but wists
April’s the time to woo!
_Cale Young Rice_
_Spring Market_
It’s foolish to bring money
To any spring wood,
Jewels won’t help you,
Gold’s no good.
Silver won’t buy you
One small leaf.
You may bring joy here,
You may bring grief.
You should look for
Tufted moss,
Marked where a light foot
Ran across.
Where the old rose hips
Shrivel brown
And dried clematis
Bloom hangs down.
There you’ll find what
Everyman needs,
Wild religion
Without any creeds,
Green that lifts its
Blossoming head,
New life springing
Among the dead.
You needn’t bring money
To this market place,
Or think you can bargain for
Wild flower grace.
_Louise Driscoll_
_Song in March_
I sing the first green leaf upon the bough,
The tiny kindling flame of emerald fire,
The stir amid the roots of reeds, and how
The sap will flush the briar.
I sing the sweeping beryl on the slopes,
Ephemeræ that come before the bees,
The ferns renascent, and the virgin hopes
Of pale anemones.
I sing the dream’s unfolding, and I sing
The chrysalis broken by the ice-freed shore,
The clear air winnowed by the bluebird’s wing,
And April at the door!
_Clinton Scollard_
_Flower Chorus_
O such a commotion under the ground,
When March called “Ho, there! ho!”
Such spreading of rootlets far and wide,
Such whisperings to and fro!
“Are you ready?” the Snowdrop asked,
“’Tis time to start, you know.”
“Almost, my dear!” the Scilla replied,
“I’ll follow as soon as you go.”
Then “Ha! ha! ha!” a chorus came
Of laughter sweet and low,
From millions of flowers under the ground,
Yes, millions beginning to grow.
“I’ll promise my blossoms,” the Crocus said,
“When I hear the blackbird sing.”
And straight thereafter Narcissus cried,
“My silver and gold I’ll bring.”
“And ere they are dulled,” another spoke,
“The hyacinth bells shall ring.”
But the Violet only murmured “I’m here,”
And sweet grew the air of spring.
Then “Ha! ha! ha!” a chorus came
Of laughter sweet and low,
From millions of flowers under the ground,
Yes, millions beginning to grow.
Oh, the pretty brave things, thro’ the coldest days
Imprisoned in walls of brown,
They never lost heart tho’ the blast shrieked loud,
And the sleet and the hail came down;
But patiently each wrought her wonderful dress,
Or fashioned her beautiful crown,
And now they are coming to lighten the world
Still shadowed by winter’s frown.
And well may they cheerily laugh “Ha! ha!”
In laughter sweet and low,
The millions of flowers under the ground,
Yes, millions beginning to grow.
_Ralph Waldo Emerson_
_April’s Coming_
April comes with sudden showers,
Chilling winds and sunny hours.
April comes with growing green
On the trees still winter-lean.
April brings the singing bird
And a joy that is absurd.
April comes and April goes,
But the flowers April sows--
Earth’s obituary tears--
Wake the immemorial years.
So with Spring’s passing comes
Summer with her borrowed drums;
Fall and winter in a ring
Till April comes again with spring.
_Lancaster Pollard_
_The Secret_
On that first day so singular
Under the ground,
It was too dark for crescent or for star,
Too deep for sound.
And lying there one thought alone
I could not still:
How soon would snow-white cherry buds be blown
Across the hill.
And then a voice within the tomb
Said very low:
“When April lights her first sharp flame of bloom
You’ll know!”
_John Richard Moreland_
_Spring_
All the lanes are lyric,
All the bushes sing;
You are at your kissing,
Spring!
Romping with your children
Do not fail to bring
Mary to the haystack,
Spring!
Froth upon the fingers,
Bosom for a king,
Speed her from the milking,
Spring!
_Norman Gale_
_April Weather_
Oh, hush, my heart, and take thine ease,
For here is April weather!
The daffodils beneath the trees
Are all a-row together.
The thrush is back with his old note;
The scarlet tulip blowing;
And white, aye, white as my love’s throat--
The dogwood boughs are growing.
The lilac bush is sweet again;
Down every wind that passes,
Fly flakes from hedgerow and from lane;
The bees are in the grasses.
And Grief goes out, and Joy comes in,
And care is but a feather;
And every lad his love can win,
For here is April weather.
_Lizette Woodworth Reese_
_Renewal_
April, when I heard
Your lyrical low word,
And when upon the hawthorn hedge your first white blossom stirred,
Something strangely came--
Something I cannot name--
And touched my heart, and cleansed my soul with a reviving flame.
When the yellow gleam
Of your hosts that stream--
Jonquil, buttercup, and crocus--made the world a golden dream,
Something, April, said
To my heart that bled--
Bled with old remembrance--“Lo, the grief-strewn days are fled!”
_Sursum corda!_ Now,
When blooms the apple-bough,
April, of your pity, let your light rain kiss my brow;
Heal me, if you will;
Bathe my heart until
I am one with your first primrose or the shining daffodil!
_Charles Hanson Towne_
_April_
Something tapped at my window pane,
Someone called me without my door.
Someone laughed like the tinkle o’ rain,
The robin echoed it o’er and o’er.
I threw the door and the window wide;
Sun and the touch of the breeze and then--
“Ah, were you expecting me, dear?” she cried,
And here was April come back again.
_Theodosia Garrison_
_The Immortal_
Spring has come up from the South again,
With soft mists in her hair,
And a warm wind in her mouth again,
And budding everywhere.
Spring has come up from the South again,
And her skies are azure fire,
And around her is the awakening
Of all the world’s desire.
Spring has come up from the South again,
And dreams are in her eyes,
And music is in her mouth again
Of love, the never-wise.
Spring has come up from the South again,
And bird and flower and bee
Know that she is their life and joy--
And immortality!
_Cale Young Rice_
_Spring_
I said in my heart, “I am sick of four walls and a ceiling.
I have need of the sky.
I have business with the grass.
I will up and get me away where the hawk is wheeling,
Lone and high,
And the slow clouds go by.
I will get me away to the waters that glass
The clouds as they pass,
To the waters that lie
Like the heart of a maiden aware of a doom drawing nigh
And dumb for sorcery of impending joy.
I will get me away to the woods.
Spring, like a huntsman’s boy,
Halloos along the hillsides and unhoods
The falcon in my will.
The dogwood calls me, and the sudden thrill
That breaks in apple blooms down country roads
Plucks me by the sleeve and nudges me away.
The sap is in the boles today,
And in my veins a pulse that yearns and goads.”
When I got to the woods, I found out
What the Spring was about,
With her gypsy ways,
And her heart ablaze,
Coming up from the South
With the wander-lure of witch songs in her mouth.
For the sky
Stirred and grew soft and swimming as a lover’s eye
As she went by;
The air
Made love to all it touched, as if its care
Were all to spare;
The earth
Prickled with lust of birth;
The woodland streams
Babbled the incoherence of the thousand dreams
Wherewith the warm sun teems.
And out of the frieze
Of the chestnut trees
I heard
The sky and the fields and the thickets find voice in a bird.
The goldenwing--hark!
How he drives his song
Like a golden nail
Through the hush of the air!
I thrill to his cry in the leafage there;
I respond to the new life mounting under the bark.
I shall not be long
To follow
With eft and bulrush, bee and bud and swallow,
On the old trail.
* * * * *
Spring in the world!
And all things are made new!
There was never a mote that whirled
In the nebular morn,
There was never a brook that purled
Where the hills were born,
There was never a leaf uncurled--
Not the first that grew--
Nor a bee-flight hurled,
Nor a bird-note skirled,
Nor a cloud-wisp swirled
In the depth of the blue,
More alive and afresh and impromptu, more thoughtless and certain and free,
More a-shout with the glee
Of the Unknown new-burst on the wonder, than here, than here,
In the re-wrought sphere
Of the new-born year--
Now, now,
When the greenlet sings on the red-bud bough
Where the blossoms are whispering “I and thou”--“I and thou,”
And a lass at the turn looks after a lad with a dawn on her brow,
And the world is just made--now!
Spring in the heart!
With her pinks and pearls and yellows!
Spring, fellows,
And we too feel the little green leaves a-start
Across the bare-twigged winter of the mart.
The campus is reborn in us today;
The old grip stirs our hearts with new-old joy;
Again bursts bonds for madcap holiday
The eternal boy.
_Richard Hovey_
_Blind_
The Spring blew trumpets of color;
Her Green sang in my brain--
I heard a blind man groping
“Tap--tap” with his cane;
I pitied him in his blindness;
But can I boast, “I see”?
Perhaps there walks a spirit
Close by, who pities me,--
A spirit who hears me tapping
The five-sensed cane of mind
Amid such unguessed glories--
That I am worse than blind.
_Harry Kemp_
_Spring Song_
Make me over, mother April,
When the sap begins to stir!
When thy flowery hand delivers
All the mountain-prisoned rivers,
And thy great heart beats and quivers
To revive the days that were,
Make me over, mother April,
When the sap begins to stir!
Take my dust and all my dreaming,
Count my heart-beats one by one,
Send them where the winters perish;
Then some golden noon re-cherish
And restore them in the sun,
Flower and scent and dust and dreaming,
With their heart-beats every one.
Set me in the urge and tide-drift
Of the streaming hosts a-wing!
Breast of scarlet, throat of yellow,
Raucous challenge, wooings mellow--
Every migrant is my fellow,
Making northward with the spring.
Loose me in the urge and tide-drift
Of the streaming hosts a-wing!
Shrilling pipe or fluting whistle,
In the valleys come again;
Fife of frog and call of tree-toad,
All my brothers, five or three-toed,
With their revel no more vetoed,
Making music in the rain,
Shrilling pipe or fluting whistle,
In the valleys come again.
Make me of thy seed to-morrow,
When the sap begins to stir!
Tawny light-foot, sleepy bruin,
Bright-eyes in the orchard ruin,
Gnarl the good life goes askew in,
Whisky-jack or tanager,--
Make me anything to-morrow,
When the sap begins to stir!
Make me even (How do I know?)
Like my friend the gargoyle there;
It may be the heart within him
Swells that doltish hands should pin him
Fixed forever in mid-air.
Make me even sport for swallows,
Like the soaring gargoyle there!
Give me the old clue to follow,
Through the labyrinth of night!
Clod of clay with heart of fire,
Things that burrow and aspire,
With the vanishing desire,
For the perishing delight,--
Only the old clue to follow,
Through the labyrinth of night!
Make me over, mother April,
When the sap begins to stir!
Fashion me from swamp or meadow,
Garden plot or ferny shadow,
Hyacinth or humble burr!
Make me over, mother April,
When the sap begins to stir!
Let me hear the far, low summons,
When the silver winds return;
Rills that run and streams that stammer,
Goldenwing with his loud hammer,
Icy brooks that brawl and clamor,
Where the Indian willows burn;
Let me hearken to the calling,
When the silver winds return,
Till recurring and recurring,
Long since wandered and come back,
Like a whim of Grieg’s or Gounod’s,
This same self, bird, bud, or Bluenose,
Some day I may capture (Who knows?)
Just the one last joy I lack,
Waking to the far new summons,
When the old spring winds come back.
For I have no choice of being,
When the sap begins to climb,--
Strong insistence, sweet intrusion,
Vasts and verges of illusion,--
So I win, to time’s confusion,
The one perfect pearl of time,
Joy and joy and joy forever,
Till the sap forgets to climb!
Make me over in the morning
From the rag-bag of the world!
Scraps of dream and duds of daring,
Home-brought stuff from far sea-faring,
Faded colors once so flaring,
Shreds of banners long since furled!
Hues of ash and glints of glory,
In the rag-bag of the world!
Let me taste the old immortal
Indolence of life once more;
Not recalling or foreseeing,
Let the great slow joys of being
Well my heart through as of yore!
Let me taste the old immortal
Indolence of life once more!
Give me the old drink for rapture,
The delirium to drain!
All my fellows drank in plenty
At the Three-Score Inns and Twenty
From the mountains to the main!
Give me the old drink for rapture,
The delirium to drain!
Only make me over, April
When the sap begins to stir!
Make me man or make me woman,
Make me oaf or ape or human,
Cup of flower or cone of fir;
Make me anything but neuter
When the sap begins to stir!
_Bliss Carman_
_The Sweet, Low Speech Of The Rain_
It is pleasant to lie in the gloaming
When the autumn is on the wane,
And the careful, rejoicing reaper
Has gathered and stored his grain,
And hear at the doors and the windows
The sweet, low speech of the rain.
To put by the thought of the sailor
Far out on the storm-rocked main,
Where the fierce waves leap and struggle.
Like beasts in passionate pain,
And lie by the hearth and listen
To the sweet, low speech of the rain.
Ah, May has the burst of the blossom,
And the red of the willow vein,
And the glad uplift of the flowers
That lead in the fragrant train;
But nothing so dear as the sweet, low
Speech of the autumn rain.
July has the rose and the purple,
And the sunset’s golden stain
On the river that draws thro’ the valley
A glittering, wave-linked chain;
But never this lyrical, tremulous,
Sweet, low speech of the rain.
Each heart knows the joy of the winter,
The drift of the snow on the plain,
The book and the charm of the fireside,
The icicles fringing the pane;
But ah, for the faltering, pausing,
Sweet, low speech of the rain.
Old friends of my heart come to-morrow,
Remembrance, Regret, and Pain,
But to-night I will lie in the gloaming
And be lulled by the lure of the rain--And
the rhythmical, lyrical, rhyming,
Sweet, low speech of the rain.
_Ella Higginson_
_Early Spring_
Once more the Heavenly Power
Makes all things new,
And domes the red-plowed hills
With loving blue;
The blackbirds have their wills,
The throstles too.
Opens a door in Heaven;
From skies of glass
A Jacob’s ladder falls
On greening grass,
And o’er the mountain-walls
Young angels pass.
Before them fleets the shower,
And burst the buds,
And shine the level lands,
And flash the floods;
The stars are from their hands
Flung through the woods,
The woods with living airs
How softly fanned,
Light airs from where the deep,
All down the sand,
Is breathing in his sleep,
Heard by the land.
O, follow, leaping blood,
The season’s lure!
O heart, look down and up,
Serene, secure,
Warm as the crocus cup,
Like snow-drops pure!
Past, Future glimpse and fade
Through some slight spell,
A gleam from yonder vale,
Some far blue fell,
And sympathies, how frail,
In sound and smell!
Till at thy chuckled note,
Thou twinkling bird,
The fairy fancies range,
And, lightly stirred,
Ring little bells of change
From word to word.
For now the Heavenly Power
Makes all things new,
And thaws the cold, and fills
The flower with dew;
The blackbirds have their wills,
The poets too.
_Alfred Tennyson_
_Spring_
Spring, with that nameless pathos in the air
Which dwells with all things fair,
Spring, with her golden suns and silver rain,
Is with us once again.
Out in the lonely woods the jasmine burns
Its fragrant lamps, and turns
Into a royal court with green festoons
The banks of dark lagoons.
In the deep heart of every forest tree
The blood is all aglee,
And there’s a look about the leafless bowers
As if they dreamed of flowers.
Yet still on every side we trace the hand
Of Winter in the land,
Save where the maple reddens on the lawn,
Flushed by the season’s dawn;
Or where, like those strange semblances we find
That age to childhood bind,
The elms put on, as if in Nature’s scorn,
The brown of Autumn corn.
As yet the turf is dark, although you know
That, not a span below,
A thousand germs are groping through the gloom,
And soon will burst their tomb.
Already, here and there, on frailest stems
Appear some azure gems,
Small as might deck, upon a gala day
The forehead of a fay.
In gardens you may note amid the dearth,
The crocus breaking earth;
And near the snowdrop’s tender white and green,
The violet in its screen.
But many gleams and shadows needs must pass
Along the budding grass,
And weeks go by, before the enamored South
Shall kiss the rose’s mouth.
Still there’s a sense of blossoms yet unborn
In the sweet airs of morn;
One almost looks to see the very street
Grow purple at his feet.
At times a fragrant breeze comes floating by,
And brings, you know not why,
A feeling as when eager crowds await
Before a palace gate
Some wondrous pageant; and you scarce would start,
If from a beech’s heart
A blue-eyed Dryad, stepping forth, should say,
“Behold me! I am May!”
_Henry Timrod_
_April, April_
April, April,
Laugh thy girlish laughter;
Then, the moment after,
Weep thy girlish tears,
April, that mine ears
Like a lover greetest,
If I tell thee, sweetest,
All my hopes and fears.
April, April,
Laugh thy golden laughter,
But, the moment after,
Weep thy golden tears!
_William Watson_
_April Rain_
It is not raining rain for me,
It’s raining daffodils;
In every dimpled drop I see
Wild flowers on the hills.
The clouds of gray engulf the day
And overwhelm the town;
It is not raining rain to me,
It’s raining roses down.
It is not raining rain to me,
But fields of clover bloom,
Where any buccaneering bee
Can find a bed and room.
A health unto the happy,
A fig for him who frets!
It is not raining rain to me,
It’s raining violets.
_Robert Loveman_