CAROLINA SPRING SONG

Against the swart magnolias’ sheen

Pronged maples, like a stag's new horn,

Stand gouted red upon the green,

In March when shaggy buds are shorn.

Then all a mist-streaked, sunny day

The long sea-islands lean to hear

A water harp that shallows play

To lull the beaches’ fluted ear.

When this same music wakes the gift

Of pregnant beauty in the sod,

And makes the uneasy vultures shift

Like evil things afraid of God,

Then, then it is I love to drift

Upon the flood-tide's lazy swirls,

While from the level rice fields lift

The spiritu'ls of darky girls.

I hear them singing in the fields

Like voices from the long-ago;

They speak to me of somber worlds

And sorrows that the humble know;

Of sorrow — yet their tones release

A harmony of larger hours

From easy epochs long at peace

Amid an irony of flowers.

So if they sometimes seem a choir

That cast a chill of doubt on spring,

They have still higher notes of fire

Like cardinals upon the wing.