AN ODE TO SPRING

Is it the Spring?

Or are the birds all wrong

That play on flute and viol,

A thousand strong,

In minstrel galleries

Of the long deep wood,

Epiphanies

Of bloom and bud.

Grave minstrels those,

Of deep responsive chant;

But see how yonder goes,

Dew-drunk, with giddy slant,

Yon Shelley-lark,

And hark!

Him on the giddy brink

Of pearly heaven

His fairy anvil clink.

Or watch, in fancy,

How the brimming note

Falls, like a string of pearls,

From out his heavenly throat;

Or like a fountain

In Hesperides,

Raining its silver rain,

In gleam and chime,

On backs of ivory girls —

Twice happy rhyme!

Ah, none of these

May make it plain,

No image we may seek

Shall match the magic of his gurgling beak.

And many a silly thing

That hops and cheeps,

And perks his tiny tail,

And sideway peeps,

And flitters little wing,

Seems in his consequential way

To tell of Spring.

The river warbles soft and runs

With fuller curve and sleeker line,

Though on the winter-blackened hedge

Twigs of unbudding iron shine,

And trampled still the river sedge.

And O the Sun!

I have no friend so generous as this Sun

That comes to meet me with his big warm hands.

And O the Sky!

There is no maid, how true,

Is half so chaste

As the pure kiss of greening willow wands

Against the intense pale blue

Of this sweet boundless overarching waste.

And see!— dear Heaven, but it is the Spring!—

See yonder, yonder, by the river there,

Long glittering pearly fingers flash

Upon the warm bright air:

Why,‘ tis the heavenly palm,

The Christian tree,

Whose budding is a psalm

Of natural piety:

Soft silver notches up the smooth green stem —

Ah, Spring must follow them,

It is the Spring!

O Spirit of Spring,

Whose strange instinctive art

Makes the bird sing,

And brings the bud again;

O in my heart

Take up thy heavenly reign,

And from its deeps

Draw out the hidden flower,

And where it sleeps,

Throughout the winter long,

O sweet mysterious power

Awake the slothful song!