Where now the seamew pipes, or dives
In yonder greening gleam, and fly

The happy birds, that change their sky
To build and brood; that live their lives

From land to land; and in my breast
Spring wakens too; and my regret
Becomes an April violet,

And buds and blossoms like the rest.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

... Ja...

O

FROM AN OLD RITUAL

DWELLERS in the dust, arise,
My little brothers of the field,
And put the sleep out of your eyes!
Your death-doom is repealed.

Lift all your golden faces now,
You dandelions in the ground!

You quince and thorn and apple bough,
Your foreheads are unbound.

O dwellers in the frost, awake,
My little brothers of the mould!
It is the time to forth and slake

Your being as of old.

You frogs and newts and creatures small

In the pervading urge of spring,

Who taught you in the dreary fall

To guess so glad a thing?

From every swale your watery notes,

Piercing the rainy cedar lands,
Proclaim your tiny silver throats
Are loosened of their bands.

O dwellers in the desperate dark,
My brothers of the mortal birth,
Is there no whisper bids you mark
The Easter of the earth?

Let the great flood of spring's return
Float every fear away, and know
We all are fellows of the fern

And children of the snow.

Bliss Carman

APRIL WEATHER

OON, ah, soon the April weather With the sunshine at the door, And the mellow melting rain-wind Sweeping from the South once more.

Soon the rosy maples budding,
And the willows putting forth,
Misty crimson and soft yellow

In the valleys of the North.

Soon the hazy purple distance,

Where the cabined heart takes wing,

Eager for the old migration

In the magic of the spring.

Soon, ah, soon the budding windflowers Through the forest white and frail, And the odorous wild cherry

Gleaming in her ghostly veil.

Soon, about the waking uplands
The hepaticas in blue,-

Children of the first warm sunlight
In their sober Quaker hue,—

All our shining little sisters
Of the forest and the field,
Lifting up their quiet faces
With the secret half revealed.

Soon across the folding twilight
Of the round earth hushed to hear,
The first robin at his vespers
Calling far, serene and clear.

Soon the waking and the summons,
Starting sap in bole and blade,
And the bubbling marshy whisper
Seeping up through bog and glade.

Soon the frogs in silver chorus

Through the night, from marsh and swale,

Blowing in their tiny oboes

All the joy that shall not fail,

Passing up the old earth rapture
By a thousand streams and rills,
From the red Virginian valleys
To the blue Canadian hills.

Soon, ah, soon the splendid impulse,
Nomad longing, vagrant whim,
When a man's false angels vanish
And the truth comes back to him.

Soon the majesty, the vision,

And the old unfaltering dream, Faith to follow, strength to stablish, Will to venture and to seem;

All the radiance, the glamour,
The expectancy and poise,
Of this ancient life renewing
Its temerities and joys.

Soon the immemorial magic
Of the young Aprilian moon,
And the wonder of thy friendship
In the twilight — soon, ah, soon!

Bliss Carman

D

DIFFUGERE NIVES

IFFUGERE nives, redeunt iam gramina campis

Arboribusque comae;

Mutat terra vices et decrescentia ripas

Flumina praetereunt;

Gratia cum Nymphis geminisque sororibus audet
Ducere nuda choros.

Immortalia ne speres, monet annus et almum
Quae rapit hora diem.

Frigora mitescunt Zephyris, ver proterit aestas,
Interitura simul

Pomifer autumnus fruges effuderit, et mox
Bruma recurrit iners.

Damna tamen celeres reparant caelestia lunae:
Nos, ubi decidimus,

Quo pius Aeneas, quo Tullus dives et Ancus,
Pulvis et umbra sumus.

Quis scit an adiciant hodiernae crastina summae
Tempora di superi?

Cuncta manus avidas fugient heredis, amico

Quae dederis animo.

Cum semel occideris et de te splendida Minos
Fecerit arbitria,

Non, Torquate, genus, non te facundia, non te
Restituet pietas:

Infernis neque enim tenebris Diana pudicum
Liberat Hippolytum,

Nec Lethaea valet Theseus abrumpere caro
Vincula Pirithoo.

VENUS GENETRIX

Horace

A

ENEADUM genetrix, hominum divomque voluptas,

Alma Venus, caeli subter labentia signa

Quae mare navigerum, quae terras frugiferentis Concelebras, per te quoniam genus omne animan

tum

Concipitur visitque exortum lumina solis:
Te, dea, te fugiunt venti, te nubila caeli
Adventumque tuum, tibi suavis daedala tellus
Summittit flores, tibi rident aequora ponti
Placatumque nitet diffuso lumine caelum.

Lucretius

WE

THE HOUNDS OF SPRING

HEN the hounds of spring are on winter's traces,

The mother of months in meadow or plain Fills the shadows and windy places

With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain;

And the brown bright nightingale amorous
Is half assuaged for Itylus,

For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces,
The tongueless vigil, and all the pain.