<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=480903" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>May-Day</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Daughter of Heaven and Earth, coy Spring,<br>With sudden passion languishing,<br>Maketh all things softly smile,<br>Painteth pictures mile on mile,<br>Holds a cup with cowslip-wreaths,<br>Whence a smokeless incense breathes.<br>Girls are peeling the sweet willow,<br>Poplar white, and Gilead-tree,<br>And troops of boys<br>Shouting with whoop and hilloa,<br>And hip, hip three times three.<br>The air is full of whistlings bland;<br>What was that I heard<br>Out of the hazy land?<br>Harp of the wind, or song of bird,<br>Or clapping of shepherd's hands,<br>Or vagrant booming of the air,<br>Voice of a meteor lost in day?<br>Such tidings of the starry sphere<br>Can this elastic air convey.<br>Or haply 't was the cannonade<br>Of the pent and darkened lake,<br>Cooled by the pendent mountain's shade,<br>Whose deeps, till beams of noonday break,<br>Afflicted moan, and latest hold<br>Even unto May the iceberg cold.<br>Was it a squirrel's pettish bark,<br>Or clarionet of jay? or hark,<br>Where yon wedged line the Nestor leads,<br>Steering north with raucous cry<br>Through tracts and provinces of sky,<br>Every night alighting down<br>In new landscapes of romance,<br>Where darkling feed the clamorous clans<br>By lonely lakes to men unknown.<br>Come the tumult whence it will,<br>Voice of sport, or rush of wings,<br>It is a sound, it is a token<br>That the marble sleep is broken,<br>And a change has passed on things.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Beneath the calm, within the light,<br>A hid unruly appetite<br>Of swifter life, a surer hope,<br>Strains every sense to larger scope,<br>Impatient to anticipate<br>The halting steps of aged Fate.<br>Slow grows the palm, too slow the pearl:<br>When Nature falters, fain would zeal<br>Grasp the felloes of her wheel,<br>And grasping give the orbs another whirl.<br>Turn swiftlier round, O tardy ball!<br>And sun this frozen side,<br>Bring hither back the robin's call,<br>Bring back the tulip's pride.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Why chidest thou the tardy Spring?<br>The hardy bunting does not chide;<br>The blackbirds make the maples ring<br>With social cheer and jubilee;<br>The redwing flutes his o-ka-lee,<br>The robins know the melting snow;<br>The sparrow meek, prophetic-eyed,<br>Her nest beside the snow-drift weaves,<br>Secure the osier yet will hide<br>Her callow brood in mantling leaves;<br>And thou, by science all undone,<br>Why only must thy reason fail<br>To see the southing of the sun?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">As we thaw frozen flesh with snow,<br>So Spring will not, foolish fond,<br>Mix polar night with tropic glow,<br>Nor cloy us with unshaded sun,<br>Nor wanton skip with bacchic dance,<br>But she has the temperance<br>Of the gods, whereof she is one,--<br>Masks her treasury of heat<br>Under east-winds crossed with sleet.<br>Plants and birds and humble creatures<br>Well accept her rule austere;<br>Titan-born, to hardy natures<br>Cold is genial and dear.<br>As Southern wrath to Northern right<br>Is but straw to anthracite;<br>As in the day of sacrifice,<br>When heroes piled the pyre,<br>The dismal Massachusetts ice<br>Burned more than others' fire,<br>So Spring guards with surface cold<br>The garnered heat of ages old:<br>Hers to sow the seed of bread,<br>That man and all the kinds be fed;<br>And, when the sunlight fills the hours,<br>Dissolves the crust, displays the flowers.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The world rolls round,--mistrust it not,--<br>Befalls again what once befell;<br>All things return, both sphere and mote,<br>And I shall hear my bluebird's note,<br>And dream the dream of Auburn dell.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">When late I walked, in earlier days,<br>All was stiff and stark;<br>Knee-deep snows choked all the ways,<br>In the sky no spark;<br>Firm-braced I sought my ancient woods,<br>Struggling through the drifted roads;<br>The whited desert knew me not,<br>Snow-ridges masked each darling spot;<br>The summer dells, by genius haunted,<br>One arctic moon had disenchanted.<br>All the sweet secrets therein hid<br>By Fancy, ghastly spells undid.<br>Eldest mason, Frost, had piled,<br>With wicked ingenuity,<br>Swift cathedrals in the wild;<br>The piny hosts were sheeted ghosts<br>In the star-lit minster aisled.<br>I found no joy: the icy wind<br>Might rule the forest to his mind.<br>Who would freeze in frozen brakes?<br>Back to books and sheltered home,<br>And wood-fire flickering on the walls,<br>To hear, when, 'mid our talk and games,<br>Without the baffled north-wind calls.<br>But soft! a sultry morning breaks;<br>The cowslips make the brown brook gay;<br>A happier hour, a longer day.<br>Now the sun leads in the May,<br>Now desire of action wakes,<br>And the wish to roam.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The caged linnet in the Spring<br>Hearkens for the choral glee,<br>When his fellows on the wing<br>Migrate from the Southern Sea;<br>When trellised grapes their flowers unmask,<br>And the new-born tendrils twine,<br>The old wine darkling in the cask<br>Feels the bloom on the living vine,<br>And bursts the hoops at hint of Spring:<br>And so, perchance, in Adam's race,<br>Of Eden's bower some dream-like trace<br>Survived the Flight, and swam the Flood,<br>And wakes the wish in youngest blood<br>To tread the forfeit Paradise,<br>And feed once more the exile's eyes;<br>And ever when the happy child<br>In May beholds the blooming wild,<br>And hears in heaven the bluebird sing,<br>'Onward,' he cries, 'your baskets bring,--<br>In the next field is air more mild,<br>And o'er yon hazy crest is Eden's balmier Spring.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Not for a regiment's parade,<br>Nor evil laws or rulers made,<br>Blue Walden rolls its cannonade,<br>But for a lofty sign<br>Which the Zodiac threw,<br>That the bondage-days are told,<br>And waters free as winds shall flow.<br>Lo! how all the tribes combine<br>To rout the flying foe.<br>See, every patriot oak-leaf throws<br>His elfin length upon the snows,<br>Not idle, since the leaf all day<br>Draws to the spot the solar ray,<br>Ere sunset quarrying inches down,<br>And half-way to the mosses brown;<br>While the grass beneath the rime<br>Has hints of the propitious time,<br>And upward pries and perforates<br>Through the cold slab a thousand gates,<br>Till green lances peering through<br>Bend happy in the welkin blue.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">April cold with dropping rain<br>Willows and lilacs brings again,<br>The whistle of returning birds,<br>And trumpet-lowing of the herds.<br>The scarlet maple-keys betray<br>What potent blood hath modest May;<br>What fiery force the earth renews,<br>The wealth of forms, the flush of hues;<br>Joy shed in rosy waves abroad<br>Flows from the heart of Love, the Lord.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Hither rolls the storm of heat;<br>I feel its finer billows beat<br>Like a sea which me infolds;<br>Heat with viewless fingers moulds,<br>Swells, and mellows, and matures,<br>Paints, and flavours, and allures,<br>Bird and brier inly warms,<br>Still enriches and transforms,<br>Gives the reed and lily length,<br>Adds to oak and oxen strength,<br>Boils the world in tepid lakes,<br>Burns the world, yet burnt remakes;<br>Enveloping heat, enchanted robe,<br>Wraps the daisy and the globe,<br>Transforming what it doth infold,<br>Life out of death, new out of old,<br>Painting fawns' and leopards' fells,<br>Seethes the gulf-encrimsoning shells,<br>Fires garden with a joyful blaze<br>Of tulips in the morning's rays.<br>The dead log touched bursts into leaf,<br>The wheat-blade whispers of the sheaf.<br>What god is this imperial Heat,<br>Earth's prime secret, sculpture's seat?<br>Doth it bear hidden in its heart<br>Water-line patterns of all art,<br>All figures, organs, hues, and graces?<br>Is it Daedalus? is it Love?<br>Or walks in mask almighty Jove,<br>And drops from Power's redundant horn<br>All seeds of beauty to be born?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Where shall we keep the holiday,<br>And duly greet the entering May?<br>Too strait and low our cottage doors,<br>And all unmeet our carpet floors;<br>Nor spacious court, nor monarch's hall,<br>Suffice to hold the festival.<br>Up and away! where haughty woods<br>Front the liberated floods:<br>We will climb the broad-backed hills,<br>Hear the uproar of their joy;<br>We will mark the leaps and gleams<br>Of the new-delivered streams,<br>And the murmuring rivers of sap<br>Mount in the pipes of the trees,<br>Giddy with day, to the topmost spire,<br>Which for a spike of tender green<br>Bartered its powdery cap;<br>And the colours of joy in the bird,<br>And the love in its carol heard,<br>Frog and lizard in holiday coats,<br>And turtle brave in his golden spots;<br>We will hear the tiny roar<br>Of the insects evermore,<br>While cheerful cries of crag and plain<br>Reply to the thunder of river and main.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">As poured the flood of the ancient sea<br>Spilling over mountain chains,<br>Bending forests as bends the sedge,<br>Faster flowing o'er the plains,--<br>A world-wide wave with a foaming edge<br>That rims the running silver sheet,--<br>So pours the deluge of the heat<br>Broad northward o'er the land,<br>Painting artless paradises,<br>Drugging herbs with Syrian spices,<br>Fanning secret fires which glow<br>In columbine and clover-blow,<br>Climbing the northern zones,<br>Where a thousand pallid towns<br>Lie like cockles by the main,<br>Or tented armies on a plain.<br>The million-handed sculptor moulds<br>Quaintest bud and blossom folds,<br>The million-handed painter pours<br>Opal hues and purple dye;<br>Azaleas flush the island floors,<br>And the tints of heaven reply.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Wreaths for the May! for happy Spring<br>To-day shall all her dowry bring,<br>The love of kind, the joy, the grace,<br>Hymen of element and race,<br>Knowing well to celebrate<br>With song and hue and star and state,<br>With tender light and youthful cheer,<br>The spousals of the new-born year.<br>Lo Love's inundation poured<br>Over space and race abroad!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Spring is strong and virtuous,<br>Broad-sowing, cheerful, plenteous,<br>Quickening underneath the mould<br>Grains beyond the price of gold.<br>So deep and large her bounties are,<br>That one broad, long midsummer day<br>Shall to the planet overpay<br>The ravage of a year of war.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Drug the cup, thou butler sweet,<br>And send the nectar round;<br>The feet that slid so long on sleet<br>Are glad to feel the ground.<br>Fill and saturate each kind<br>With good according to its mind,<br>Fill each kind and saturate<br>With good agreeing with its fate,<br>Willow and violet, maiden and man.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The bitter-sweet, the haunting air,<br>Creepeth, bloweth everywhere;<br>It preys on all, all prey on it,<br>Blooms in beauty, thinks in wit,<br>Stings the strong with enterprise,<br>Makes travellers long for Indian skies,<br>And where it comes this courier fleet<br>Fans in all hearts expectance sweet,<br>As if to-morrow should redeem<br>The vanished rose of evening's dream.<br>By houses lies a fresher green,<br>On men and maids a ruddier mien,<br>As if time brought a new relay<br>Of shining virgins every May,<br>And Summer came to ripen maids<br>To a beauty that not fades.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The ground-pines wash their rusty green,<br>The maple-tops their crimson tint,<br>On the soft path each track is seen,<br>The girl's foot leaves its neater print.<br>The pebble loosened from the frost<br>Asks of the urchin to be tost.<br>In flint and marble beats a heart,<br>The kind Earth takes her children's part,<br>The green lane is the school-boy's friend,<br>Low leaves his quarrel apprehend,<br>The fresh ground loves his top and ball,<br>The air rings jocund to his call,<br>The brimming brook invites a leap,<br>He dives the hollow, climbs the steep.<br>The youth reads omens where he goes,<br>And speaks all languages the rose.<br>The wood-fly mocks with tiny noise<br>The far halloo of human voice;<br>The perfumed berry on the spray<br>Smacks of faint memories far away.<br>A subtle chain of countless rings<br>The next unto the farthest brings,<br>And, striving to be man, the worm<br>Mounts through all the spires of form.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I saw the bud-crowned Spring go forth,<br>Stepping daily onward north<br>To greet staid ancient cavaliers<br>Filing single in stately train.<br>And who, and who are the travellers?<br>They were Night and Day, and Day and Night,<br>Pilgrims wight with step forthright.<br>I saw the Days deformed and low,<br>Short and bent by cold and snow;<br>The merry Spring threw wreaths on them,<br>Flower-wreaths gay with bud and bell;<br>Many a flower and many a gem,<br>They were refreshed by the smell,<br>They shook the snow from hats and shoon,<br>They put their April raiment on;<br>And those eternal forms,<br>Unhurt by a thousand storms,<br>Shot up to the height of the sky again,<br>And danced as merrily as young men.<br>I saw them mask their awful glance<br>Sidewise meek in gossamer lids;<br>And to speak my thought if none forbids.<br>It was as if the eternal gods,<br>Tired of their starry periods,<br>Hid their majesty in cloth<br>Woven of tulips and painted moth.<br>On carpets green the maskers march<br>Below May's well-appointed arch,<br>Each star, each god, each grace amain,<br>Every joy and virtue speed,<br>Marching duly in her train,<br>And fainting Nature at her need<br>Is made whole again.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'T was the vintage-day of field and wood,<br>When magic wine for bards is brewed;<br>Every tree and stem and chink<br>Gushed with syrup to the brink.<br>The air stole into the streets of towns,<br>And betrayed the fund of joy<br>To the high-school and medalled boy:<br>On from hall to chamber ran,<br>From youth to maid, from boy to man,<br>To babes, and to old eyes as well.<br>'Once more,' the old man cried, 'ye clouds,<br>Airy turrets purple-piled,<br>Which once my infancy beguiled,<br>Beguile me with the wonted spell.<br>I know ye skilful to convoy<br>The total freight of hope and joy<br>Into rude and homely nooks,<br>Shed mocking lustres on shelf of books,<br>On farmer's byre, on meadow-pipes,<br>Or on a pool of dancing chips.<br>I care not if the pomps you show<br>Be what they soothfast appear,<br>Or if yon realms in sunset glow<br>Be bubbles of the atmosphere.<br>And if it be to you allowed<br>To fool me with a shining cloud,<br>So only new griefs are consoled<br>By new delights, as old by old,<br>Frankly I will be your guest,<br>Count your change and cheer the best.<br>The world hath overmuch of pain,--<br>If Nature give me joy again,<br>Of such deceit I'll not complain.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ah! well I mind the calendar,<br>Faithful through a thousand years,<br>Of the painted race of flowers,<br>Exact to days, exact to hours,<br>Counted on the spacious dial<br>Yon broidered zodiac girds.<br>I know the pretty almanac<br>Of the punctual coming-back,<br>On their due days, of the birds.<br>I marked them yestermorn,<br>A flock of finches darting<br>Beneath the crystal arch,<br>Piping, as they flew, a march,--<br>Belike the one they used in parting<br>Last year from yon oak or larch;<br>Dusky sparrows in a crowd,<br>Diving, darting northward free,<br>Suddenly betook them all,<br>Every one to his hole in the wall,<br>Or to his niche in the apple-tree.<br>I greet with joy the choral trains<br>Fresh from palms and Cuba's canes.<br>Best gems of Nature's cabinet,<br>With dews of tropic morning wet,<br>Beloved of children, bards, and Spring,<br>O birds, your perfect virtues bring,<br>Your song, your forms, your rhythmic flight,<br>Your manners for the heart's delight,<br>Nestle in hedge, or barn, or roof,<br>Here weave your chamber weather-proof,<br>Forgive our harms, and condescend<br>To man, as to a lubber friend,<br>And, generous, teach his awkward race<br>Courage, and probity, and grace!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Poets praise that hidden wine<br>Hid in milk we drew<br>At the barrier of Time,<br>When our life was new.<br>We had eaten fairy fruit,<br>We were quick from head to foot,<br>All the forms we look on shone<br>As with diamond dews thereon.<br>What cared we for costly joys,<br>The Museum's far-fetched toys?<br>Gleam of sunshine on the wall<br>Poured a deeper cheer than all<br>The revels of the Carnival.<br>We a pine-grove did prefer<br>To a marble theatre,<br>Could with gods on mallows dine,<br>Nor cared for spices or for wine.<br>Wreaths of mist and rainbow spanned,<br>Arch on arch, the grimmest land;<br>Whistle of a woodland bird<br>Made the pulses dance,<br>Note of horn in valleys heard<br>Filled the region with romance.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">None can tell how sweet,<br>How virtuous, the morning air;<br>Every accent vibrates well;<br>Not alone the wood-bird's call,<br>Or shouting boys that chase their ball,<br>Pass the height of minstrel skill,<br>But the ploughman's thoughtless cry,<br>Lowing oxen, sheep that bleat,<br>And the joiner's hammer-beat,<br>Softened are above their will.<br>All grating discords melt,<br>No dissonant note is dealt,<br>And though thy voice be shrill<br>Like rasping file on steel,<br>Such is the temper of the air,<br>Echo waits with art and care,<br>And will the faults of song repair.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">So by remote Superior Lake,<br>And by resounding Mackinac,<br>When northern storms and forests shake,<br>And billows on the long beach break,<br>The artful Air doth separate<br>Note by note all sounds that grate,<br>Smothering in her ample breast<br>All but godlike words,<br>Reporting to the happy ear<br>Only purified accords.<br>Strangely wrought from barking waves,<br>Soft music daunts the Indian braves,--<br>Convent-chanting which the child<br>Hears pealing from the panther's cave<br>And the impenetrable wild.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">One musician is sure,<br>His wisdom will not fail,<br>He has not tasted wine impure,<br>Nor bent to passion frail.<br>Age cannot cloud his memory,<br>Nor grief untune his voice,<br>Ranging down the ruled scale<br>From tone of joy to inward wail,<br>Tempering the pitch of all<br>In his windy cave.<br>He all the fables knows,<br>And in their causes tells,--<br>Knows Nature's rarest moods,<br>Ever on her secret broods.<br>The Muse of men is coy,<br>Oft courted will not come;<br>In palaces and market squares<br>Entreated, she is dumb;<br>But my minstrel knows and tells<br>The counsel of the gods,<br>Knows of Holy Book the spells,<br>Knows the law of Night and Day,<br>And the heart of girl and boy,<br>The tragic and the gay,<br>And what is writ on Table Round<br>Of Arthur and his peers,<br>What sea and land discoursing say<br>In sidereal years.<br>He renders all his lore<br>In numbers wild as dreams,<br>Modulating all extremes,--<br>What the spangled meadow saith<br>To the children who have faith;<br>Only to children children sing,<br>Only to youth will spring be spring.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Who is the Bard thus magnified?<br>When did he sing, and where abide?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Chief of song where poets feast<br>Is the wind-harp which thou seest<br>In the casement at my side.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">AEolian harp,<br>How strangely wise thy strain!<br>Gay for youth, gay for youth,<br>(Sweet is art, but sweeter truth,)<br>In the hall at summer eve<br>Fate and Beauty skilled to weave.<br>From the eager opening strings<br>Rung loud and bold the song.<br>Who but loved the wind-harp's note?<br>How should not the poet doat<br>On its mystic tongue,<br>With its primeval memory,<br>Reporting what old minstrels said<br>Of Merlin locked the harp within,--<br>Merlin paying the pain of sin,<br>Pent in a dungeon made of air,--<br>And some attain his voice to hear,<br>Words of pain and cries of fear,<br>But pillowed all on melody,<br>As fits the griefs of bards to be.<br>And what if that all-echoing shell,<br>Which thus the buried Past can tell,<br>Should rive the Future, and reveal<br>What his dread folds would fain conceal?<br>It shares the secret of the earth,<br>And of the kinds that owe her birth.<br>Speaks not of self that mystic tone,<br>But of the Overgods alone:<br>It trembles to the cosmic breath,--<br>As it heareth, so it saith;<br>Obeying meek the primal Cause,<br>It is the tongue of mundane laws:<br>And this, at least, I dare affirm,<br>Since genius too has bound and term,<br>There is no bard in all the choir,<br>Not Homer's self, the poet sire,<br>Wise Milton's odes of pensive pleasure,<br>Or Shakspeare, whom no mind can measure,<br>Nor Collins' verse of tender pain,<br>Nor Byron's clarion of disdain,<br>Scott, the delight of generous boys,<br>Or Wordsworth, Pan's recording voice,--<br>Not one of all can put in verse,<br>Or to this presence could rehearse,<br>The sights and voices ravishing<br>The boy knew on the hills in Spring,<br>When pacing through the oaks he heard<br>Sharp queries of the sentry-bird,<br>The heavy grouse's sudden whirr,<br>The rattle of the kingfisher;<br>Saw bonfires of the harlot flies<br>In the lowland, when day dies;<br>Or marked, benighted and forlorn,<br>The first far signal-fire of morn.<br>These syllables that Nature spoke,<br>And the thoughts that in him woke,<br>Can adequately utter none<br>Save to his ear the wind-harp lone.<br>And best can teach its Delphian chord<br>How Nature to the soul is moored,<br>If once again that silent string,<br>As erst it wont, would thrill and ring.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Not long ago, at eventide,<br>It seemed, so listening, at my side<br>A window rose, and, to say sooth,<br>I looked forth on the fields of youth:<br>I saw fair boys bestriding steeds,<br>I knew their forms in fancy weeds,<br>Long, long concealed by sundering fates,<br>Mates of my youth,--yet not my mates,<br>Stronger and bolder far than I,<br>With grace, with genius, well attired,<br>And then as now from far admired,<br>Followed with love<br>They knew not of,<br>With passion cold and shy.<br>O joy, for what recoveries rare!<br>Renewed, I breathe Elysian air,<br>See youth's glad mates in earliest bloom,--<br>Break not my dream, obtrusive tomb!<br>Or teach thou, Spring! the grand recoil<br>Of life resurgent from the soil<br>Wherein was dropped the mortal spoil.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Soft on the south-wind sleeps the haze!<br>So on thy broad mystic van<br>Lie the opal-coloured days,<br>And waft the miracle to man.<br>Soothsayer of the eldest gods,<br>Repairer of what harms betide,<br>Revealer of the inmost powers<br>Prometheus proffered, Jove denied;<br>Disclosing treasures more than true,<br>Or in what far to-morrow due;<br>Speaking by the tongues of flowers,<br>By the ten-tongued laurel speaking,<br>Singing by the oriole songs,<br>Heart of bird the man's heart seeking;<br>Whispering hints of treasure hid<br>Under Morn's unlifted lid,<br>Islands looming just beyond<br>The dim horizon's utmost bound;--<br>Who can, like thee, our rags upbraid,<br>Or taunt us with our hope decayed?<br>Or who like thee persuade,<br>Making the splendour of the air,<br>The morn and sparkling dew, a snare?<br>Or who resent<br>Thy genius, wiles, and blandishment?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">There is no orator prevails<br>To beckon or persuade<br>Like thee the youth or maid:<br>Thy birds, thy songs, thy brooks, thy gales,<br>Thy blooms, thy kinds,<br>Thy echoes in the wilderness,<br>Soothe pain, and age, and love's distress,<br>Fire fainting will, and build heroic minds.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For thou, O Spring! canst renovate<br>All that high God did first create.<br>Be still his arm and architect,<br>Rebuild the ruin, mend defect;<br>Chemist to vamp old worlds with new,<br>Coat sea and sky with heavenlier blue,<br>New-tint the plumage of the birds,<br>And slough decay from grazing herds,<br>Sweep ruins from the scarped mountain,<br>Cleanse the torrent at the fountain,<br>Purge alpine air by towns defiled,<br>Bring to fair mother fairer child,<br>Not less renew the heart and brain,<br>Scatter the sloth, wash out the stain,<br>Make the aged eye sun-clear,<br>To parting soul bring grandeur near.<br>Under gentle types, my Spring<br>Masks the might of Nature's king,<br>An energy that searches thorough<br>From Chaos to the dawning morrow;<br>Into all our human plight,<br>The soul's pilgrimage and flight;<br>In city or in solitude,<br>Step by step, lifts bad to good,<br>Without halting, without rest,<br>Lifting Better up to Best;<br>Planting seeds of knowledge pure,<br>Through earth to ripen, through heaven endure.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Ralph+Waldo+Emerson">Ralph Waldo Emerson</a><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=480903" data-title="May-Day de Ralph Waldo Emerson" data-description="Daughter of Heaven and Earth, coy Spring, With sudden passion languishing, Maketh all things softly smile, Painteth pictures mile on mile, Holds a cup with cowslip-wreaths, Whence a smokeless incense breathes. Girls are peeling the sweet willow, P..."></div> </div> </div>

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