Earth has been sleeping, and now she wakes,
And the kind sky-mother bends and takes
The laughing thing in her warm embrace,
And scatters her kisses over its face,
And every kiss will grow into a flower
To brighten with beauty a coming hour.
April is here!
Blithest season of all the year.
The little brook laughs as it leaps away;
The lambs are out on the hills at play;
The warm south wind sings, the whole day long,
The merriest kind of a wordless song.
Gladness is born of the April weather,
And the heart is as light as a wind-tossed feather.
Who could be sad on a day like this?
The care that vexed us no longer is.
If we sit down at the great tree's feet
We feel the pulses of Nature beat.
There's an upward impulse in every thing;
Look up and be glad, is the law of Spring,
And, as flowers grow under last year's leaves,
New hopes arise in the heart that grieves
Over the grave of a gladness dead,
And the soul that sorrowed is comforted.
I know there's a blossom somewhere near,
For the south wind tosses into my room
A hint of summer, a vague perfume
It has pilfered somewhere (I cannot tell
Whether from pansy or pimpernel),
But it sets me dreaming of birds and bees,
And the odorous snowstorms of apple-trees;
Of roses sweet by the garden wall,
And milk-white lilies, stately and tall;
Of clover red in the morning sun,
And withered and dead when the sun is done;
Of the song that the stalwart mower sings,
Of gladness, and beauty, and all sweet things
That summer brings.
HAVE found violets. April hath come on,
And the cool winds feel softer, and the rain Falls in the beaded drops of summer-time. You may hear birds at morning, and at eve The tame dove lingers till the twilight falls, Cooing upon the eaves, and drawing in His beautiful, bright neck; and, from the hills, A murmur, like the hoarseness of the sea, Tells the release of waters, and the earth Sends up a pleasant smell, and the dry leaves Are lifted by the grass; and so I know That Nature, with her delicate ear, hath heard The drooping of the velvet foot of Spring. Take of my violets! I found them where. The liquid south stole o'er them, on a bank That leaned to running water. There's to me A daintiness about these early flowers,
That touches me like poetry. They blow
With such a simple loveliness among
The common herbs of pasture, and breathe out
Their lives so unobtrusively, like hearts
Whose beatings are too gentle for the world.
I love to go in the capricious days
Of April and hunt violets, when the rain
Is in the blue cups trembling, and they nod
So gracefully to the kisses of the wind.
It may be deemed too idle, but the young
Read nature like the manuscript of Heaven,
And call the flowers its poetry. Go out!
Ye spirits of habitual unrest,
And read it, when the "fever of the world'
Hath made your hearts impatient, and, if life
Hath yet one spring unpoisoned, it will be
Like a beguiling music to its flow,
And you will no more wonder that I love
To hunt for violets in the April-time.
Nathaniel Parker Willis.
"The Spring comes slowly up this way." - Coleridge.
IS the moon of the spring time, yet never a bird
In the wind-shaken elm or the maple is heard;
For green meadow grasses, wide levels of snow,
And blowing of drifts where the crocus should blow;
Where windflower and violet, amber and white,
On south-sloping brook-sides should smile in the light,
O'er the cold winter beds of their late waking roots,
The frosty flake eddies, the ice crystal shoots;
And longing for light, under wind-driven heaps
Round the boles of the pine wood the ground laurel creeps,
Unkissed of the sunshine, unbaptized of showers,
With buds scarcely swelled, which should burst into flowers!
We wait for thy coming, sweet wind of the south,
For the touch of thy light wings, the kiss of thy mouth,
For the yearly evangel thou bearest from God,
Resurrection and life to the graves of the sod!
-John Greenleaf Whittier.
HOME THOUGHTS, FROM ABROAD.
Now that April's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England, — now!
And after April, when May follows,
And the white-throat builds, and all the swallows,
Hark! where my blossom'd pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dew-drops, at the bent spray's edge, That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over, Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine, careless rapture!
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children's dower,
Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower.
HE poplar drops beside the way
Its tasseled plumes of silver-gray;
The chestnut pouts its great brown buds
Impatient for the laggard May.
The honeysuckles lace the wall,
The hyacinths grow fair and tall;
And mellow sun and pleasant wind
And odorous bees are over all.
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