The Street-Children's Dance
NOW the earth in fields and hills
Stirs with pulses of the Spring,
Next-embowering hedges ring
With interminable trills;
Sunlight runs a race with rain,
All the world grows young again.
Young as at the hour of birth:
From the grass the daisies rise
With the dew upon their eyes,
Sun-awakened eyes of earth;
Fields are set with cups of gold;
Can this budding world grow old?
Can the world grow old and sere,
Now when ruddy-tasselled trees
Stoop to every passing breeze,
Rustling in their silken gear;
Now when blossoms pink and white
Have their own terrestrial light?
Brooding light falls soft and warm,
Where in many a wind-rocked nest,
Curled up 'neath the she-bird's breast,
Clustering eggs are hid from harm;
While the mellow-throated thrush
Warbles in the purpling bush.
Misty purple bathes the Spring:
Swallows flashing here and there
Float and dive on waves of air,
And make love upon the wing;
Crocus-buds in sheaths of gold
Burst like sunbeams from the mould.
Chestnut leaflets burst their buds,
Perching tiptoe on each spray,
Springing toward the radiant day,
As the bland, pacific floods
Of the generative sun
All the teeming earth o'errun.
Can this earth run o'er with beauty,
Laugh through leaf and flower and grain,
While in close-pent court and lane,
In the air so thick and sooty,
Little ones pace to and fro,
Weighted with their parents' woe?
Woe-predestined little ones!
Putting forth their buds of life
In an atmosphere of strife,
And crime breeding ignorance;
Where the bitter surge of care
Freezes to a dull despair.
Dull despair and misery
Lie about them from their birth;
Ugly curses, uglier mirth,
Are their earliest lullaby;
Fathers have they without name,
Mothers crushed by want and shame.
Brutish, overburthened mothers,
With their hungry children cast
Half-nude to the nipping blast;
Little sisters with their brothers
Dragging in their arms all day
Children nigh as big as they.
Children mothered by the street:
Shouting, flouting, roaring after
Passers-by with gibes and laughter,
Diving between horses' feet,
In and out of drays and barrows,
Recklessly, like London sparrows.
Mudlarks of our slums and alleys,
All unconscious of the blooming
World behind those housetops looming.
Of the happy fields and valleys,
Of the miracle of Spring
With its boundless blossoming.
Blossoms of humanity!
Poor soiled blossoms in the dust!
Through the thick defiling crust
Of soul-stifling poverty,
In your features may be traced
Childhood's beauty half effaced--
Childhood, stunted in the shadow
Of the light-debarring walls:
Not for you the cuckoo calls
O'er the silver-threaded meadow;
Not for you the lark on high
Pours his music from the sky.
Ah! you have your music too!
And come flocking round that player
Grinding at his organ there,
Summer-eyed and swart of hue,
Rattling off his well-worn tune
On this April afternoon.
Lovely April lights of pleasure
Flit o'er want-beclouded features
Of these little outcast creatures,
As they swing with rhythmic measure,
In the courage of their rags,
Lightly o'er the slippery flags.
Little footfalls, lightly glancing
In a luxury of motion,
Supple as the waves of ocean
In your elemental dancing,
How you fly, and wheel, and spin,
For your hearts too dance within.
Dance along with mirth and laughter,
Buoyant, fearless, and elate,
Dancing in the teeth of fate,
Ignorant of your hereafter
That with all its tragic glooms
Blindly on your future looms.
Past and future, hence away!
Joy, diffused throughout the earth,
Centre in this moment's mirth
Of ecstatic holiday:
Once in all their lives' dark story,
Touch them, Fate! with April glory.
poem by Mathilde Blind
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April Rain
The April rain, the April rain,
Comes slanting down in fitful showers,
Then from the furrow shoots the grain,
And banks are fledged with nestling flowers;
And in grey shaw and woodland bowers
The cuckoo through the April rain
Calls once again.
The April sun, the April sun,
Glints through the rain in fitful splendour,
And in grey shaw and woodland dun
The little leaves spring forth and tender
Their infant hands, yet weak and slender,
For warmth towards the April sun,
One after one.
And between shower and shine hath birth
The rainbow's evanescent glory;
Heaven's light that breaks on mists of earth!
Frail symbol of our human story,
It flowers through showers where, looming hoary,
The rain-clouds flash with April mirth,
Like Life on earth.
poem by Mathilde Blind
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Poem from a Picture
(Children at play on a French Battlefield)
'When I was a child,'
You shall tell one day,
Children, on these blackened fields
Gallantly at play,
'All the quiet sky
Burst in death aflame;
One day, I was young,
Then . . . The Horror came.'
'When I was a child . . .'
Wind-tossed leaves of war,
Is there childhood still for you,
Wise in horror-lore,
Who have heard your sisters' screams
Shattering your play,
Seen your mothers past their dead
Led to shame away?
Ragged, helpless, maimed,
Hungry, left alone
Where the smoking roof-beams lie
By the wrecked hearth-stone,
Still you mime (child-hearts are strong,
Childhood pain is brief)
Echoes of world-victory,
World-defeat, world-grief!
Dauntless in your rags,
Insolent in mirth,
Laughing with young lips that know
All the griefs of earth,
God, who loves a high heart well,
Will not let you fail–
You are France, who laughs at Hell–
France, who shall prevail!
poem by Margaret Widdemer
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Spring Song II
THE spring is here, and the long nights grow
Less bitterly cold than awhile ago;
Our rags serve their purpose now, and keep
Warmth enough in us to let us sleep.
The rain that trickles down our walls
No longer seems to freeze as it falls;
There was dust, not mud, on our feet to-day;
There's some green in a flower-pot over the way;
The sky-strip over the court's changed hue,
From dull yellow-grey to clear grey-blue;
Through our broken windows no more the storm
Laughs and shrieks as we try to keep warm,
But through dusty panes the long sunbeams peer,
For the spring is here.
Small joy the greenness and grace of spring
To grey hard lives like our own can bring.
A drowning man cares little to think
Of the lights on the waves where he soon must sink.
The greenest garments the spring can wear
Are black already with our despair:
Earth will be one with us soon--shall we care
If snow or sunshine be over us there,
Or if wintry the world be we found so drear,
Or if spring be here?
In the western half of our Christian town
The Winter only pretends to frown,
And when his undreaded rage is done,
The 'London season' they say is begun.
With wine, feast, revelling, laugh and song,
The hours rose-garlanded dance along,
The whirl of wickedness wilder grows
In this western camp of our bitter foes;
They fight with each other--the victors take
The largest share of the wealth we make;
They spend on their horses, their women, their wives,
The money wrung from our blasted lives:
It is theirs to enjoy--it is ours to pay.
Do they never dream of a reckoning day,
When the lives they have wrecked shall be counted up,
And measured the blood that has brightened their cup,
When we who have worked shall take payment due,
And they for their work shall have payment too?
Do they dream of that coming hour? Not they!
Their feet flit fast down the smooth steep way,
They see not the waiting snakes that hide
In the hothouse flowers at their life-path's side,
They know no justice, no pity, no fear--
But the spring is here!
Yes--here! In the hope we had almost lost,
That has sprung to bud after long years' frost;
In this fire in our veins that cries, 'Give youth,
Love, manhood, life, for the Right and the Truth;'
In our steady purpose, for Freedom's sake,
Through custom, privilege, 'fate,' to break;
In the brains of the thinkers, the arms of the men
Who will strike, and strike, and still strike again,
Till they cut our way to the land of flowers,
And the summer of freedom at last is ours--
In these is the spring. The winter was sore--
It is over and done, and will come no more.
The fruit will grow with the changing year,
Though only the blossoms now appear;
For the sake of the fruit the blossoms are dear,
And the spring is here--the spring is here.
poem by Edith Nesbit
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In April
I
AS lightly as a filmy veil
That folds the April larch,
My tenderest joy drops like a dream
Down from the buds of March,
My dim sweet joy that fills the wood
From delicate arch to arch.
My frailest joy that draws my heart
Out from its prison bar,
Whose step is swifter and more sweet
Than all Spring's blossoms are,
My trembling joy that holds my soul
Up like a ransomed star.
What shall I do to keep my joy,
That has become so dear,
Who dare not stir to hold it close,
My joy that is so near,
That wraps me with a filmy veil
So woven in with fear.
II
IF I should lose these petals you let fall
To my stretched hand,
If through the leaf-buds I should miss them all,
And empty stand,
The April flowers their petals would recall
Throughout the land.
If I should lose these shining clouds of white
Flying like doves,
To some embowered region shut from sight
Their spirit moves,
The glory would drop out of all the light
That April loves.
If I should miss to toss my reckless heart
Up to the sky,
Through every spray your careless fingers part
As you go by,
In every budding place where blossoms start,
April would die.
III
AH, do not let your spirit fail me now,
Now while the winds are sweet,
Now while the sun slips through the willow-bough
In patterns to my feet,
While shadows like mad rivers run,
Over the grass to fly the sun,
Ah, do not fail me now.
Now while the burnished poplars swing and play,
Like sails that would be free
To reach the untravelled azure far away,
And take the aerial sea,
Yet are too joyous in a birth
That binds them to the radiant earth,
Ah, fail me not to-day.
Ah, do not fail me while the unbroken dews
Hang like a captive shower,
In vagrant places that my wanderings choose
To cherish into flower;
Ah, do not let your spirit fail
My spirit, while the hours prevail
That only love can use.
IV
MUST I walk lonely underneath the seas
Of April's blossom, watch the shining drift
Of clustered bloom through all the apple-trees,
With never an azure rift,
Look upward through the glistening cherry-bough,
For ever lonely now.
Must I go empty through sweet lanes of thorn,
And see their wands flowered in fleecy white,
Stretching through all the land now Spring is born,
To fill the fields with light,
Must I stand empty for sweet April's sake
To watch the leaf-buds break.
Now when the primrose beds are palest gold,
And cuckoo-flowers stand sentinel in the grass,
Must I see all the joys of April told,
And through them joyless pass,
In all the love that drops from April's sky,
Must I go loveless by.
V
I CALL you through the sapphire deep
That hides the folded shrouds of sleep,
Along the amethystine way
That stretches in the wake of day.
Through all the pearly lakes that soon
Flow through the skies below the moon,
Through all the heaven's wide sea of light
I call you from the caves of night.
Through all earth's bitter prayers that press
Up from its floods of loneliness,
To find some pity for their pain,
I call you to my heart again.
VI
OH, do you doubt the ways,
The paths of breaking fire,
My chariot wheels shall take these April days
With swift desire,
The road whose delicate shadows are ablaze
With quivering flames that neither drop nor tire.
Oh, do you doubt they strayed
Down from the heavenly hill,
My captive steeds whose passionate feet are made
To be so still,
Whose breath stirs tenderly as wind-flowers laid
In tremulous dreams the April moonlights fill.
Fear not my steeds shall fail
To keep their high estate,
Their foreheads are new-crowned with stars that pale
The moons of fate;
Ah, do not doubt my chariot shall avail
To bring you surely to the Eternal Gate.
poem by Dollie Radford
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Children’s Day 2011
The bud that tried to form some way
Was disallowed from doing so;
The bud that sprung out fine one day
Couldn’t blossom like how others do.
The buds that bloomed into flowers
Got plucked or crushed before they grew;
The flowers that found the rain showers
Got withered unseeded by dew!
When children are future adults on earth,
Why parents choose to play God while in womb?
And kill them mercilessly before birth,
Converting their first home into a tomb!
When love of God has formed them healthy, hale,
Should mom or dad decide their destiny?
And if to Maker unborn tell their tale,
God’s rage will rise supporting the tiny!
Let parents love their kids before their birth;
Let unborn see world’s grandeur that’s God-made;
Let human beings be humane on earth;
Let love of life be prime and hatred fade!
Allow all children to be born and fed;
Give them the love and tender care they need;
Bestow the warmth and human touch in bed;
Let children grow like mammoth trees from seed!
On Children’s Day, let love enter young hearts;
Let children not be unwanted on earth;
Let children not be used as man’s spare-parts;
Let every nation feel proud by their birth!
poem by John Celes
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One Day
Today I have been happy. All the day
I held the memory of you, and wove
Its laughter with the dancing light o' the spray,
And sowed the sky with tiny clouds of love,
And sent you following the white waves of sea,
And crowned your head with fancies, nothing worth,
Stray buds from that old dust of misery,
Being glad with a new foolish quiet mirth.
So lightly I played with those dark memories,
Just as a child, beneath the summer skies,
Plays hour by hour with a strange shining stone,
For which (he knows not) towns were fire of old,
And love has been betrayed, and murder done,
And great kings turned to a little bitter mould.
poem by Rupert Brooke (1913)
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Growth And Trees
Growth
Trees are conceived just as humans are
from seeds the striplings rise
Yet rooted to one place
They grow
No choice where their future lies
Subject to nature’s way’s and whim’s
bearing the brunt of chance
No option, no choice
No vote, no voice
they perform in the wind, their arboreal dance
And they grow
Like young children they blossom with grace and wonder
With litheness, with vibrance
Innocence thereunder
filled with awe and wonder
They grow, oh how they grow!
Tall and stronger, each day brings them closer
To the sky and the clouds
To the smell of ambrosia
like their wee kinfolk, in fields of timothy and clover
Children and trees know nothing of guile
Lies, treachery, deceit
The common, the elite
And yet all the while
They grow
With the approach of Fall winds, the trees sway and quiver
Immodestly dropping more leaves with each shiver and
a blanket of yellow, a patchwork of gold
Shielding the earth from winter’s coming cold
Settles silently,
Yet relentlessly
Shyly, yet bold
Through the winds of winter
Through the ice and the snow
They exist, they persist
They resist, they insist
That they grow
They grow
They awaken like children to springs fresh breath
Limbs green, supple and new
Buds swelling, birds dwelling, life is refreshed
Mother natures, spring time brew
Invigorating
Intoxicating and
Exhilarating too
Children and trees rush toward summer with glee and
Are dressed in new raiment to suit
The trees clad in green, the child’s green knees
New seeds in the ground taking root
Squirrels scratch the bark
The sparrow, the lark
They grow
The young, in nests, creation reborn
New life, new presence on earth
From womb, from eggs, new life is formed
The world as always gives birth
As it was
As it is
As it always will be
They will never cease
To grow.
poem by David Whalen
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April in the Hills
To-day the world is wide and fair
With sunny fields of lucid air,
And waters dancing everywhere;
The snow is almost gone;
The noon is builded high with light,
And over heaven's liquid height,
In steady fleets serene and white,
The happy clouds go on.
The channels run, the bare earth steams,
And every hollow rings and gleams
With jetting falls and dashing streams;
The rivers burst and fill;
The fields are full of little lakes,
And when the romping wind awakes
The water ruffles blue and shakes,
And the pines roar on the hill.
The crows go by, a noisy throng;
About the meadows all day long,
The shore-lark drops his brittle song;
And up the leafless tree
The nut-hatch runs, and nods, and clings;
The bluebird dips with flashing wings,
The robin flutes, the sparrow sings,
And the swallows float and flee.
I break the spirit's cloudy bands,
A wanderer in enchanted lands,
I feel the sun upon my hands;
And far from care and strife
The broad earth bids me forth. I rise
With lifted brow and upward eyes.
I bathe my spirit in blue skies,
And taste the springs of life.
I feel the tumult of new birth;
I waken with the wakening earth;
I match the bluebird in her mirth;
And wild with wind and sun,
A treasurer of immortal days,
I roam the glorious world with praise,
The hillsides and the woodland ways,
Till earth and I are one.
poem by Archibald Lampman
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Love's Blindness
Now do I know that Love is blind, for I
Can see no beauty on this beauteous earth,
No life, no light, no hopefulness, no mirth,
Pleasure nor purpose, when thou art not nigh.
Thy absence exiles sunshine from the sky,
Seres Spring's maturity, checks Summer's birth,
Leaves linnet's pipe as sad as plover's cry,
And makes me in abundance find but dearth.
But when thy feet flutter the dark, and thou
With orient eyes dawnest on my distress,
Suddenly sings a bird on every bough,
The heavens expand, the earth grows less and less,
The ground is buoyant as the ether now,
And all looks lovely in thy loveliness.
poem by Alfred Austin
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Echoes Of Spring
I.
I WALK about in driving snow,
And drizzling rain, splashed o'er and o'er;
No sign that radiant spring e'en now
Stands at the threshold of the door.
No sign that fragrant violets burn
To burst the ground and quicken forth;
No sign that swallow flights return,
To gladden all the serious north.
But in my breast--what flutterings here!
What bursts of song! what twitt'rings blest!
Sure the first swallow of the year
Within my heart has built her nest.
II.
Oft on the gleaming April days,
When skies are soft, and winds are warm,
And in the air a subtle charm,
And on the hill a flight of rays;
When silver clouds slide through the blue,
Spreading a pure, transparent wing,
And all the budding branches ring
With blithesome birds, that warbling woo;
Beneath a pear tree's shade I lay,
Deep bedded in the long thick grass,
And heard the twitt'ring swallow pass,
And grasshoppers at endless play.
I knew, though flowers mine eyes did screen,
That butterflies danced in the light;
For, breaking sunbeams in their flight,
They flashed their shadows on the green.
And gazing up, in dreamful ease,
Where quiv'ring frail on shivery sprays,
The blossoms mix a milky maze,
What hum of golden-girted bees!
So lily-white, the tree, behold,
Seems set on fire by burnished lights,
And shoal on honeying shoal alights,
And turns the snowy boughs to gold.
Thus on my spirit--music-fraught,
Burst swarms of glimm'ring melodies,
And like the yellow-banded bees,
Make honey of my flutt'ring thought.
III.
Sometimes on my soul will throng
Such a blossom-burst of song,
That I cannot seize it all,
Letting sweetest measures fall.
Thus a child feels--sudden sunk
On a crowding violet bank,
And delighted and amazed,
Gathers in a flushèd haste.
Gathers them so fast and fleet,
Little fingers cannot meet
O'er the lot; and swifter still
Than they cull, the wealth they spill.
To that sweets o'erflooded nook,
Casting back one longing look,
At the last it takes away
But one little odorous spray.
Yet through many a day and night,
Flinging back the fragrant sight,
Cleaves to face, and hands, and feet,
All the woodland's violets sweet.
IV.
Fain would I sing of each sweet sight and sound,
Of fleeting odours wheeling round and round,
Of sunbeams dancing on the virgin grass,
Of flocks of fleecy clouds that glimmer as they pass.
Of larks, that lost in the blue ether float,
Of the weird blackbird's dream--enchanted note!
While the glad hedges palpitate with song,
That drops like murm'ring rain the dewy fields among.
Of blooming bushes and of budding trees,
Of flaming flowers, dotting the grassy leas,
Of glowing pools and of the babbling rills,
That flash through azure mists, slumb'ring on folded hills.
Fain would I sing, sweet April-time, of thee,
And mingle in thy wantonness of glee;
But thou such overwealth of sweets dost fling,
My heart is all too full, too full to speak or sing.
V.
There's somewhat in the loveliness of spring,
In the young light, and in the fragrant bloom,
In the sweet song that each soft breeze doth wing,
In the bright flowers that rise from earth's dark womb;
Which fills with sadness the presentient mind,
And for a far-off home awakes the sigh;
Which makes us gaze, with longings undefined,
On dim blue hills, and weep--we know not why.
VI.
Oh, birds, winged voices! children of the light!
Whose song is love, whose love is melody;
Shedding o'er hedge, and field, and bush, and tree,
Your tuneful joy and musical delight,
Making the air, the earth, the heavens bright;
Melodious, tender, sad and gay and free;
By all these gifts true poets born are ye;
Love circumscribes alone your restless flight.
Poets, I say? Ah, not like poets here,
That wander forth alone, companionless;
Whose lays are wrung from them by care and pain;
Who sing, while blinded by the hot salt tear.
Not such are ye; but free from all distress,
Ye, with the sunlight, range o'er land and main.
VII.
Oh, soft sweet air of early spring,
Again thou float'st on viewless wing,
Coax'st snowdrops their white bells to ring,
And wak'st the blackbird up to sing.
Again, upon the bright'ning lea,
Beneath the budding bursting tree,
The toddling baby-mites I see,
Skip, jump, and frisk in lamb-like glee.
But I am sad, I know not why;
My breast heaves with the long-drawn sigh;
The tear rounds slowly in mine eye;
I'd like to lay me down and die.
VIII.
The blooming hedge, the budding grove,
Resound with notes of joy and love;
The gleaming bush, the glimm'ring tree,
Live with a dewy melody.
Along the meadows, flashing bright,
Run trills of shrill and sweet delight;
E'en the small snowy clouds among,
Gush showers on showers of silver song.
But thou, my heart, oh, tell me why
Hast thou no language but a sigh?
IX.
Like a flower-fall of rain,
Like a snowy elfin train,
Like stray gleams of moonlight fair,
Do you shift upon the air,
Do you flutter on the breeze,
Do you fall upon the leas,
Blossoms of the apple-trees;
Then on earth's bosom slow ye fade away,
Like to a low and sweetly dying lay.
X.
With thousand gaps the earth is split,
By sunbeams wounded o'er and o'er,
My heart, it acheth bit by bit;
Life's heat and dust have made it sore.
When wilt thou fall from clouds above,
In silver showers, refreshing rain?
When wilt thou come, reviving love,
With dew, and make me whole again?
A little while, big drops will slake,
Oh, earth, thy thirst's hot agony;
But till my fevered heart doth break,
Will solace ever come to me?
poem by Mathilde Blind
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The Call of the Winds
Ho, come out with the wind of spring,
And step it blithely in woodlands waking;
Friend am I of each growing thing
From the gray sod into sunshine breaking;
Mine is the magic of twilights dim,
Of violets blue on the still pool's rim,
Mine is the breath of the blossoms young
Sweetest of fragrances storied or sung
Come, ye earth-children, weary and worn,
I will lead you over the hills of morn.
Ho, come out with the summer wind,
And loiter in meadows of ripening clover,
Where the purple noons are long and kind,
And the great white clouds drift fleecily over.
Mine is immortal minstrelsy,
The fellowship of the rose and bee,
Beguiling laughter of willowed rills,
The rejoicing of pines on inland hills,
Come, ye earth-children, by dale and stream,
I will lead you into the ways of dream.
Ho, when the wind of autumn rings
Through jubilant mornings crisp and golden,
Come where the yellow woodland flings
Its hoarded wealth over by-ways olden.
Mine are the grasses frosted and sere,
That lisp and rustle around the mere,
Mine are the flying racks that dim
The lingering sunset's reddening rim,
Earth-children, come, in the waning year,
I will harp you to laughter and buoyant cheer.
Ho, when the wind of winter blows
Over the uplands and moonlit spaces,
Come ye out to the waste of snows,
To the glimmering fields and the silent places.
I whistle gaily on starry nights
Through the arch of the elfin northern lights,
But in long white valleys I pause to hark
Where the ring of the home-lights gems the dark.
Come, ye earth-children, whose hearts are sad,
I will make you valiant and strong and glad!
poem by Lucy Maud Montgomery
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Compensation
In that new world toward which our feet are set,
Shall we find aught to make our hearts forget
Earth's homely joys and her bright hours of bliss?
Has heaven a spell divine enough for this?
For who the pleasure of the spring shall tell
When on the leafless stalk the brown buds swell,
When the grass brightens and the days grow long,
And little birds break out in rippling song?
O sweet the dropping eve, the blush of morn,
The starlit sky, the rustling fields of corn,
The soft airs blowing from the freshening seas,
The sunflecked shadow of the stately trees,
The mellow thunder and the lulling rain,
The warm, delicious, happy summer rain,
When the grass brightens and the days grow long,
And little birds break out in rippling song!
O beauty manifold, from morn till night,
Dawn's flush, noon's blaze and sunset's tender light!
O fair, familiar features, changes sweet
Of her revolving seasons, storm and sleet
And golden calm, as slow she wheels through space,
From snow to roses, - and how dear her face,
When the grass brightens, when the days grow long,
And little birds break out in rippling song!
O happy earth! O home so well beloved!
What recompense have we, from thee removed?
One hope we have that overtops the whole, -
The hope of finding every vanished soul,
We love and long for daily, and for this
Gladly we turn from thee, and all thy bliss,
Even at thy loveliest, when the days are long,
And little birds break out in rippling song.
poem by Celia Thaxter
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La Regina Avrillouse
Lady of rich allure,
Queen of the spring's embrace,
Your arms are long like boughs of ash,
Mid laugh-broken streams, spirit of rain unsure,
Breath of the poppy flower,
All the wood thy bower
And the hills thy dwelling-place.
This will I no more dream;
Warm is thy arm's allure,
Warm is the gust of breath
That ere thy lips meet mine
Kisseth my cheek and saith:
"This is the joy of earth,
Here is the wine of mirth
Drain ye one goblet sure,
Take ye the honey cup
The honied song raise up,
Drink of the spring's allure,
April and dew and rain;
Brown of the earth sing sure,
Cheeks and lips and hair
And soft breath that kisseth where
Thy lips have come not yet to drink."
Moss and the mold of earth,
These be thy couch of mirth,
Long arms thy boughs of shade
April-alluring, as the blade
Of grass doth catch the dew
And make it crown to hold the sun.
Banner be you
Above my head,
Glory to all wold display'd,
April-alluring, glory-bold.
poem by Ezra Pound
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An April Adoration
Sang the sun rise on an amber morn -
'Earth, be glad! An April day is born.
'Winter's done, and April's in the skies,
Earth, look up with laughter in your eyes!'
Putting off her dumb dismay of snow,
Earth bade all her unseen children grow.
Then the sound of growing in the air
Rose to God a liturgy of prayer;
And the thronged succession of the days
Uttered up to God a psalm of praise.
Laughed the running sap in every vein,
Laughed the running flurries of warm rain,
Laughed the life in every wandering root,
Laughed the tingling cells of bud and shoot.
God in all the concord of their mirth
Heard the adoration-song of Earth.
poem by Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
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Magdalen Walks
THE little white clouds are racing over the sky,
And the fields are strewn with the gold of the flower of March,
The daffodil breaks under foot, and the tasselled larch
Sways and swings as the thrush goes hurrying by.
A delicate odour is borne on the wings of the morning breeze,
The odour of leaves, and of grass, and of newly up-turned earth,
The birds are singing for joy of the Spring's glad birth,
Hopping from branch to branch on the rocking trees.
And all the woods are alive with the murmur and sound of Spring,
And the rosebud breaks into pink on the climbing briar,
And the crocus-bed is a quivering moon of fire
Girdled round with the belt of an amethyst ring.
And the plane to the pine-tree is whispering some tale of love
Till it rustles with laughter and tosses its mantle of green,
And the gloom of the wych-elm's hollow is lit with the iris sheen
Of the burnished rainbow throat and the silver breast of a dove.
See! the lark starts up from his bed in the meadow there,
Breaking the gossamer threads and the nets of dew,
And flashing a-down the river, a flame of blue!
The kingfisher flies like an arrow, and wounds the air.
poem by Oscar Wilde
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Spring Song In The City
WHO remains in London,
In the streets with me,
Now that Spring is blowing
Warm winds from the sea;
Now that trees grow green and tall,
Now the sun shines mellow,
And with moist primroses all
English lanes are yellow?
Little barefoot maiden,
Selling violets blue,
Hast thou ever pictur’d
Where the sweetlings grew?
Oh, the warm wild woodland ways,
Deep in dewy grasses,
Where the windblown shadow strays,
Scented as it passes!
Pedlar breathing deeply,
Toiling into town,
With the dusty highway
You are dusky brown;
Hast thou seen by daisied leas,
And by rivers flowing,
Lilac-ringlets which the breeze
Loosens lightly blowing?
Out of yonder wagon
Pleasant hay-scents float,
He who drives it carries
A daisy in his coat:
Oh, the English meadows, fair
Far beyond all praises!
Freckled orchids everywhere
Mid the snow of daisies!
Now in busy silence
Broods the nightingale,
Choosing his love’s dwelling
In a dimpled dale;
Round the leafy bower they raise
Rose-trees wild are springing;
Underneath, thro’ the green haze,
Bounds the brooklet singing.
And his love is silent
As a bird can be,
For the red buds only
Fill the red rose-tree;
Just as buds and blossoms blow
He ’ll begin his tune,
When all is green and roses glow
Underneath the moon.
Nowhere in the valleys
Will the wind be still,
Everything is waving,
Wagging at his will:
Blows the milkmaid’s kirtle clean,
With her hand press’d on it;
Lightly o’er the hedge so green
Blows the ploughboy’s bonnet.
Oh, to be a roaming
In an English dell!
Every nook is wealthy,
All the world looks well,
Tinted soft the Heavens glow,
Over Earth and Ocean,
Waters flow, breezes blow,
All is light and motion!
poem by William Cosmo Monkhouse
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Spring is...
Pastel blue eggs in robin’s nest
Spring breeze blows softly from the west
Kneading ripples on languid lake
Teasing rain for greening fields to slake
Pregnant buds on Dogwood trees
Future forage for yet unborn bees
More days of warmth, less days of cold
More fields of green, less fields of gold
Frogs emerge from hibernation
Black eyes gaping wide in fascination
At dragonflies with iridescent wings
At fiery colours, incandescent things
Tadpoles, crawdads, Mayflies, midges
Spider eggs, baby bats, neath rusty rural bridges
Stunningly silent explosion of beauty,
Blossoms and fragrances, intoxicatingly fruity
Such an extraordinary, yet ordinary thing
Uncommonly common… season of Spring
poem by David Whalen
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Summer Song
The meadow lark’s trill and the brown thrush’s whistle
From morning to evening fill all the sweet air,
And my heart is as light as the down of a thistle –
The world is so bright and the earth is so fair.
There is life in the wood, there is bloom on the meadow;
The air drops with songs that the merry birds sing.
The sunshine has won, in the battle with shadow,
And she’s dressed the glad earth with robes of the spring.
The bee leaves his hive for the field of red clover
And the vale where the daisies bloom white as the snow,
And a mantle of warm yellow sunshine hangs over
The calm little pond, where the pale lillies grow.
In the woodland beyond it, a thousand gay voices
Are singing in chorus some jubilant air.
The bird and the bee and all nature rejoices,
The world is so bright, and the earth is so fair.
I am glad as a child, in this beautiful weather;
I have tossed all my burdens and trials away;
My heart is as light – yes, as light as a feather; -
I am care-free, and careless, and happy to-day.
Can it be there approaches a dark, dreary to-morrow?
Can shadows e’er fall on this beautiful earth?
Ah! To-day is my own! No forebodings of sorrow
Shall darken my skies, or shall dampen my mirth.
poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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April Far Away
On the mossy ditch along the old bohreen
Wildflowers in their thousands are now to be seen
Bluebells and primroses and snowdrops in white
Bloom after the rains in the warm Spring sunlight.
Dandelions, buttercups and daisies in April are never rare
In the lush green fields they are seen everywhere
And the pink breasted bullfinch singing on the alder tree
Amidst all the greenery quite easy to see.
The wild birds are nesting and all through the day
The leafy groves echo to their songs in April far away
And young lambs in the fields around their mothers play
Youth must have it's fling you hear people say.
The lark carols above the mountain and the clear flowing rill
It babbles it's way down the field by the hill
On to join the big stream along by the hedgerow
That flows to the big river that to the sea flow.
The crab tree wears her blossoms of light pink to gray
And far north of here in April far away
The fox cubs in the sunshine play outside their den
And in fancy I hear the loud song of the wren.
poem by Francis Duggan
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Light
Light, my light, the world-filling light,
the eye-kissing light,
heart-sweetening light!
Ah, the light dances, my darling, at the center of my life;
the light strikes, my darling, the chords of my love;
the sky opens, the wind runs wild, laughter passes over the earth.
The butterflies spread their sails on the sea of light.
Lilies and jasmines surge up on the crest of the waves of light.
The light is shattered into gold on every cloud, my darling,
and it scatters gems in profusion.
Mirth spreads from leaf to leaf, my darling,
and gladness without measure.
The heaven's river has drowned its banks
and the flood of joy is abroad.
poem by Rabindranath Tagore
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