Part 10

_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_

April

An altered look about the hills; A Tyrian light the village fills; A wider sunrise in the dawn; A deeper twilight on the lawn; A print of a vermilion foot; A purple finger on the slope; A flippant fly upon the pane; A spider at his trade again; An added strut in chanticleer; A flower expected everywhere; An axe shrill singing in the woods; Fern-odors on untravelled roads,-- All this, and more I cannot tell, A furtive look you know as well, And Nicodemus’ mystery Receives its annual reply.

_Emily Dickinson_

_April Morning_

I would spend a morning With an April apple tree, Speaking to it softly And laughing out in glee.

All the summer sunshine And all the winter moon Are shining in the blossoms That will be gone so soon.

I will spend a morning With a friendly apple tree, Hearing many secrets That it will tell to me.

I will take a morning To drink the beauty in; I will take a morning-- But how shall I begin?

_George Elliston_

_May-Lure_

How the heart pulls at its tether In the magic warm spring weather! How the blood leaps in its courses When the deep ebullient forces Break the bosom brown of earth!

It is worth All a man can scrape or squander Just to idle, just to wander Forth from trade, away from duty, Revelling in all the beauty And the glamour of the May.

Who to-day Cares a fig for any other Thought save this: The earth, great mother, Has turned kind, has banished gloom and dole; Music, that audient outlet for the soul, Comes in, and grief goes out, and life is whole.

_Richard Burton_

_Sunrise_

Day! Faster and more fast, O’er night’s brim, day boils at last: Boils, pure gold, o’er the cloud-cup’s brim Where spurting and suppressed it lay, For not a froth-flake touched the rim Of yonder gap in the solid gray Of the eastern cloud, an hour away; But forth one wavelet, then another, curled, Till the whole sunrise, not to be suppressed, Rose, reddened, and its seething breast Flickered in bounds, grew gold, then overflowed the world.

_Robert Browning_

_The Throstle_

“Summer is coming, summer is coming, I know it, I know it, I know it. Light again, leaf again, life again, love again,” Yes, my wild little Poet.

Sing the new year in under the blue. Last year you sang it as gladly. “New, new, new, new!” Is it then so new That you should carol so madly?

“Love again, song again, nest again, young again,” Never a prophet so crazy! And hardly a daisy as yet, little friend, See, there is hardly a daisy.

“Here again, here, here, here, happy year!” Oh, warble unchidden, unbidden! Summer is coming, is coming, my dear, And all the winters are hidden.

_Alfred Tennyson_

_Tell All The World_

Tell all the world that summer’s here again With song and joy; tell them, that they may know How, on the hillside, in the shining fields New clumps of violets and daisies grow.

Tell all the world that summer’s here again, That white clouds voyage through a sky so still With blue tranquillity, it seems to hang One windless tapestry, from hill to hill.

Tell all the world that summer’s here again: Folk go about so solemnly and slow, Walking each one his grooved and ordered way-- I fear that, otherwise they will not know!

_Harry Kemp_

_Sorrow in a Garden_

Here to this ancient garden When wintry days had flown I came, with Comrade Sorrow To dwell with her alone.

Within this sweet seclusion Far from the world’s rude stare What exquisite communings Sorrow and I would share!

What banquets of remembrance, What luxury of tears With Sorrow in a garden Through the rose scented years!

But one day when she called me I did not hear her voice; I only heard the lilies Which sang, Rejoice! Rejoice!

For _June_ was in the garden And June was in my heart,-- I had forgot pale Sorrow And now we dwell apart.

But often in the twilight When birds and gardens sleep I feel her presence with me Her arms about me creep.

And when the ghost of Summer With the dead roses talks I hear her softly sobbing Along the moon-lit walks.

I never can forget her So intimate were we But when I walk my garden She comes no more to me.

_May Riley Smith_

_The Naturalist On A June Sunday_

My old gardener leans on his hoe, Tells me the way that green things grow; “Goin’ to church? Why no. All nature’s church enough for me!” Says he.

“Preachin’ o’ flower and choir o’ bird, An’ the wind passin’ the plate-- Sweetest service that ever I heard, That’s straight! _Eternal Rest?_ What for, friend? Gimme a swarm o’ bees to tend, A honey-makin’, world without end, That’s what I’d like the best! (Scoop ’em right up an’ find the queen, They’d not sting me--the bees ain’ mean!)

“Heaven’s all right! But still I guess I’ll kinder miss The Lady Lunar moth at night And the White Wanderer butterfly Crawlin’ out of its chrysalis! I want my heaven human too, ’Twixt me an’ you-- Why I’d jus’ love to see A chipmunk hop up to the Lord An’ eat right out o’ His dread Hand Same as it does to me! Eternity--eternity-- Don’t it sound grand? But say _What’s the matter with today?_ Just step into the wood an’ take a look! Ain’t that a page o’ teachin’ from the Holy Book? ‘He that hath eyes to see An’ ears to hear’-- That’s good enough for me! I guess God’s pretty near, He’ll understand, I know, Why I ain’t in no hurry to let June go!”

My old gardener turns to his hoe, Helping the green things how to grow, “The Missis can go to church for me! Amen!” says he.

_Leonora Speyer_

_Summer_[4]

By sea and by land, In the water-wooed marshes or meadows wide-reaching and bland, The summer is regal and rich, the summer on every hand Spills largesses splendid to mortals, to women and men. For when Is the breeze sweeter fraught with the breath of the hay, Is the thrush-note more calm or the robin’s loud lay More blithe, or the rose more the queen of the day? Now say, What month is more bounteous in beauties, in balms, In lyrics, in psalms, In gold-heart fair fancies of sunset, and calms Of twilight, or after-glows wondrously clear? One may hear The booming of bees and the brook’s lulled refrain, The stream’s liquid epic, the grasshopper’s plain, The frog’s bass reiterant languor at night, The day-long and dark-long sound-woof, interplight With dreamings and memories somber or bright.

A very miracle, I saw a moment gone: A honeysuckle, vine and bloom, Lustrous green and coral red, I glimpsed above my head Shedding a rapt perfume. And then this marvel fell That I would dwell upon: A bird--nay, rather say an airy sprite Compact of color, light, And a most ravishing power of flight, Darted from nowhere, somewhere, And alighted there, And sat at gaze a moment or twain, And then was off again. Not Wordsworth’s cuckoo were a dearer guest Unto my quest, So insubstantial, spirit small And fleetsome in his call; Ah, ye know well It was the humming-bird whereof I tell.

This mother-month of Summer holds her place Not only by the grace Attending on her many winsome ways,-- Her flower-gifts, her bird-lays, Her bridal form and face,--But by what went before and cometh after; April tears, May blooms and laughter, September’s blazonry, and then October Fruit-ripe and hushed and most imperially sober With sense of harvest dignity and worth. Thus, memory and expectation, Spring-gleams, fruitions of the fall, Encircle June and give unto her station A reverend look, a light historical; Child, maiden, matron, she is each and all.

_Richard Burton_

[4] From “Dumb in June”

_Autumn_

The morns are meeker than they were, The nuts are getting brown; The berry’s cheek is plumper, The rose is out of town.

The maple wears a gayer scarf, The field a scarlet gown. Lest I should be old-fashioned, I’ll put a trinket on.

_Emily Dickinson_

_Overtones_

I heard a bird at break of day Sing from the autumn trees A song so mystical and calm, So full of certainties, No man, I think, could listen long Except upon his knees. Yet this was but a simple bird, Alone, among dead trees.

_William Alexander Percy_

_Carouse_

Autumn, in her scarlet cloak, Comes tumbling down the hills. Oh, she is tipsy with her dreams That the blue day distils; An amber cup is in her hands From which the wonder spills.

Now leaf and vine turn golden brown, And purple asters shine Along the roads where Autumn runs, Drunken with mystic wine. The world is one vast tapestry Of intricate design.

Where Autumn lurches through the dusk In raiment wildly red, A crowd of urchins follow her, With many a tousled head-- Chrysanthemums, like naughty boys, Driving the crone to bed!

_Charles Hanson Towne_

_A Song in Autumn_

Autumn, Autumn, give me of your crimson, Give it me for courage, for the year has left me meek, And your crimson banners flying, as the sign of your defying, Shall dare my heart’s denying the patience of the weak.

Autumn, Autumn, give me of your yellow, Give it unto me for hope--the hope I could not hold; For where your gold is burning I feel the dream returning, The darling pain of yearning whose passing left me old.