Poems About Spring

Sound the flute! Now it's mute! Bird's delight, Day and night, Nightingale, In the dale, Lark in sky,-- Merrily,Merrily merrily, to welcome in the year.

Little boy, Full of joy; Little girl,

O thou with dewy locks, who lookest downThrough the clear windows of the morning, turnThine angel eyes upon our western isle,Which in full choir hails thy approach, O Spring!

The hills tell one another, and the listeningValleys hear; all our longing eyes are turn’dUp to thy bright pavilions: issue forthAnd let thy holy feet visit our clime!

Come o’er the eastern hills, and let our windsKiss thy perfumèd garments; let us tasteThy morn and evening breath; scatter thy pearlsUpon our lovesick land that mourns for thee.

O deck her forth with thy fair fingers; pourThy soft kisses on her bosom; and putThy golden crown upon her languish’d head,Whose modest tresses are bound up for thee.

I heard a thousand blended notesWhile in a grove I sat reclined,In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughtsBring sad thoughts to the mind.

To her fair works did Nature linkThe human soul that through me ran;And much it grieved my heart to thinkWhat Man has made of Man.

Through primrose tufts, in that sweet bower,The periwinkle trail'd its wreaths;And 'tis my faith that every flowerEnjoys the air it breathes.

The birds around me hopp'd and play'd,Their thoughts I cannot measure--But the least motion which they madeIt seem'd a thrill of pleasure.

The budding twigs spread out their fanTo catch the breezy air;And I must think, do all I can,That there was pleasure there.

If this belief from heaven be sent,If such be Nature's holy plan,Have I not reason to lamentWhat Man has made of Man?

Ask not the cause why sullen Spring So long delays her flowers to bear;Why warbling birds forget to sing, And winter storms invert the year:Chloris is gone; and fate providesTo make it Spring where she resides.

Chloris is gone, the cruel fair; She cast not back a pitying eye:But left her lover in despair To sigh, to languish, and to die:Ah! how can those fair eyes endureTo give the wounds they will not cure?

Great God of Love, why hast thou made A face that can all hearts command,That all religions can invade, And change the laws of every land?Where thou hadst plac’d such power before,Thou shouldst have made her mercy more.

When Chloris to the temple comes, Adoring crowds before her fall;She can restore the dead from tombs And every life but mine recall.I only am by Love design’dTo be the victim for mankind.

Lo! where the rosy-bosom'd Hours, Fair Venus' train, appear,Disclose the long-expecting flowers And wake the purple year!The Attic warbler pours her throatResponsive to the cuckoo's note,The untaught harmony of Spring:While, whispering pleasure as they fly,Cool Zephyrs through the clear blue sky Their gather'd fragrance fling.

Where'er the oak's thick branches stretch A broader, browner shade,

Spring, the sweet Spring, is the year’s pleasant king;Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring,Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing-- Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!

The palm and may make country houses gay,Lambs frisk and play, the shepherds pipe all day,And we hear aye birds tune this merry lay-- Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!

The fields breathe sweet, the daisies kiss our feet,Young lovers meet, old wives a-sunning sit,In every street these tunes our ears do greet-- Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo! Spring, the sweet Spring!

Once more the Heavenly PowerMakes all things new,And domes the red-plowed hillsWith loving blue;The blackbirds have their wills,The throstles too.

Opens a door in Heaven;From skies of glassA Jacob's ladder fallsOn greening grass,And o'er the mountain-wallsYoung angels pass.

Dip down upon the northern shore,O sweet new-year, delaying long;Thou doest expectant Nature wrong,Delaying long, delay no more.

What stays thee from the clouded noons,Thy sweetness from its proper place?Can trouble live with April days,Or sadness in the summer moons?

Bring orchis, bring the fox-glove spire,The little speedwell's darling blue,Deep tulips dashed with fiery dew,Laburnums, dropping-wells of fire.

Now the North wind ceases, The warm South-west awakes; Swift fly the fleeces, Thick the blossom-flakes.

Now hill to hill has made the stride,And distance waves the without-end:Now in the breast a door flings wide;Our farthest smiles, our next is friend.And song of England’s rush of flowersIs this full breeze with mellow stops,That spins the lark for shine, for showers;He drinks his hurried flight, and drops.

The silver birch is a dainty lady,She wears a satin gown;The elm tree makes the old churchyard shady,She will not live in town.

The English oak is a sturdy fellow,He gets his green coat late;The willow is smart in a suit of yellow,While brown the beech trees wait.

Such a gay green gown God gives the larches--As green as He is good!The hazels hold up their arms for archesWhen Spring rides through the wood.

The chestnut's proud, and the lilac's pretty,The poplar's gentle and tall,But the plane tree's kind to the poor dull city--I love him best of all!

Tossing his mane of snows in wildest eddies and tangles, Lion-like March cometh in, hoarse, with tempestuous breath,Through all the moaning chimneys, and ’thwart all the hollows and angles Round the shuddering house, threating of winter and death.

But in my heart I feel the life of the wood and the meadow Thrilling the pulses that own kindred with fibres that liftBud and blade to the sunward, within the inscrutable shadow, Deep in the oak’s chill core, under the gathering drift.

Nay, to earth’s life in mine some prescience, or dream, or desire (How shall I name it aright?) comes for a moment and goes--Rapture of life ineffable, perfect--as if in the brier, Leafless there by my door, trembled a sense of the rose.

The soote season, that bud and bloom forth brings,With green hath clad the hill and eke the vale:The nightingale with feathers new she sings;The turtle to her make hath told her tale.Summer is come, for every spray now springs:The hart hath hung his old head on the pale;The buck in brake his winter coat he flings;The fishes flete with new repairèd scale.

The adder all her slough away she slings;The swift swallow pursueth the flies smale;The busy bee her honey now she mings;Winter is worn that was the flowers’ bale.

And thus I see among these pleasant thingsEach care decays, and yet my sorrow springs.

WHAT bird so sings, yet so does wail?O ’tis the ravish’d nightingale.Jug, jug, jug, jug, tereu! she cries,And still her woes at midnight rise.Brave prick-song! Who is’t now we hear?None but the lark so shrill and clear;Now at heaven’s gate she claps her wings,The morn not waking till she sings.Hark, hark, with what a pretty throatPoor robin redbreast tunes his note!Hark how the jolly cuckoos singCuckoo! to welcome in the spring!Cuckoo! to welcome in the spring!

I come, I come! ye have called me long;I come o'er the mountains, with light and song;Ye may trace my step o'er the waking earthBy the winds which tell of the violet's birth,By the primrose stars in the shadowy grass,By the green leaves opening as I pass.

I have breathed on the South, and the chestnut flowersBy thousands have burst from the forest bowers,And the ancient graves and the fallen fanesAre veiled with wreaths as Italian plains;But it is not for me, in my hour of bloom,To speak of the ruin or the tomb!

O Spring, I know thee! Seek for sweet surpriseIn the young children's eyes.But I have learnt the years, and know the yetLeaf-folded violet.Mine ear, awake to silence, can foretellThe cuckoo's fitful bell.I wander in a gray time that enclosesJune and the wild hedge-roses.A year's procession of the flowers doth passMy feet, along the grass.And all you sweet birds silent yet, I knowThe notes that stir you so,

When wintry weather's all a-done,An' brooks do sparkle in the zun,An' naisy-builden rooks do vleeWi' sticks toward their elem tree;When birds do zing, an' we can zeeUpon the boughs the buds o' spring,--Then I'm as happy as a king,A-vield wi' health an' zunsheen.

Vor then the cowlsip's hangen flowerA-wetted in the zunny shower,Do grow wi' vi'lets, sweet o' smell,Bezide the wood-screened graegle's bell;

That zephyr every year So soon was heard to sigh in forests here,It was for her: that wrapp’d in gowns of green Meads were so early seen,That in the saddest months oft sung the merles,It was for her; for her trees dropp’d forth pearls. That proud and stately courtsDid envy those our shades and calm resorts,It was for her; and she is gone, O woe! Woods cut again do grow,Bud doth the rose and daisy, winter done;But we, once dead, no more do see the sun.

Sweet Spring, thou turn’st with all thy goodly train,Thy head with flames, thy mantle bright with flow’rs:The zephyrs curl the green locks of the plain,The clouds for joy in pearls weep down their show’rs.Thou turn’st, sweet youth, but ah! my pleasant hoursAnd happy days with thee come not again;The sad memorials only of my painDo with thee turn, which turn my sweets in sours.Thou art the same which still thou wast before,Delicious, wanton, amiable, fair;But she, whose breath embalm’d thy wholesome air,Is gone--nor gold nor gems her can restore. Neglected virtue, seasons go and come, While thine forgot lie closèd in a tomb.

Alexis, here she stay’d; among these pines,Sweet hermitress, she did alone repair;Here did she spread the treasure of her hair,More rich than that brought from the Colchian mines.She set her by these muskèd eglantines,--The happy place the print seems yet to bear:Her voice did sweeten here thy sugar’d lines,To which winds, trees, beasts, birds, did lend their ear.Me here she first perceived, and here a mornOf bright carnations did o’erspread her face;Here did she sigh, here first my hopes were born,And I first got a pledge of promised grace: But ah! what served it to be happy so? Sith passèd pleasures double but new woe?

Gone were but the winter cold, And gone were but the snow,I could sleep in the wild woods Where primroses blow.

Cold’s the snow at my head, And cold at my feet;And the finger of death’s at my e’en, Closing them to sleep.

Let none tell my father Or my mother so dear,--I’ll meet them both in heaven At the spring of the year.

We journeyed through broad woodland ways,My Love and I.The maples set the shining fields ablaze.The blue May skyBrought to us its great Spring surprise;While we saw all things through each other's eyes.

And sometimes from a steep hillsideShone fair and brightThe shadhush, like a young June bride,Fresh clothed in white.Sometimes came glimpses glad of the blue sea;But I smiled only on my Love; he smiled on me.

The violets made a field one mass of blue -Even bluer than the sky;The little brook took on that color too,And sang more merrily."Your dress is blue," he laughing said. "Your eyes,"My heart sang, "sweeter than the bending skies."

We spoke of poets dead so long ago,And their wise words;We glanced at apple-trees, like drifted snow;We watched the nesting birds, -Only a moment! Ah, how short the day!Yet all the winters cannot blow its sweetness quite away.

Spring, with that nameless pathos in the airWhich dwells with all things fair,Spring, with her golden suns and silver rain,Is with us once again.

Out in the lonely woods the jasmine burnsIts fragrant lamps, and turnsInto a royal court with green festoonsThe banks of dark lagoons.

In the deep heart of every forest treeThe blood is all aglee,And there's a look about the leafless bowersAs if they dreamed of flowers.

Make me over, Mother April,When the sap beings to stir!When thy flowery hand deliversAll the mountain-prisoned rivers,And thy great heart beats and quiversTo revive the days that were,Make me over, Mother April,When the sap begins to stir!

Take my dust and all my dreaming,Count my heart-beats one by one,Send them where the winters perish;Then some golden noon recherish

Blue sky, green fields, and lazy yellow sun!Why should I hunger for the burning South,Where beauty needs no travail to be won,Now I may kiss her pure impassioned mouth?

Winds rippling with the rich delight of spring!Why should I yearn for myriad-colored skies,Lit by auroral suns, when I may singThe flame and rapture of her starry eyes?

Oh, song of birds, and flowers fair to see!Why should I thirst for far-off Eden-isles,When I may hear her discourse melody,And bask, a dreamer, in her dreamy smiles?

Who remains in London,In the streets with me,Now that Spring is blowingWarm winds from the sea;Now that trees grow green and tall,Now the sun shines mellow,And with moist primroses allEnglish lanes are yellow?

Little barefoot maiden,Selling violets blue,Hast thou ever picturedWhere the sweetlings grew?

Whereas, on certain boughs and sprays Now divers birds are heard to sing,And sundry flowers their heads upraise, Hail to the coming on of spring!

The songs of those said birds arouse The memory of our youthful hours,As green as those said sprays and boughs, As fresh and sweet as those said flowers.

The birds aforesaid,--happy pairs,-- Love, mid the aforesaid boughs, inshrinesIn freehold nests; themselves, their heirs, Administrators, and assigns.

O busiest term of Cupid's Court, Where tender plaintiffs actions bring,--Season of frolic and of sport, Hail, as aforesaid, coming spring!

The Spring returns! What matters then that WarOn the horizon like a beacon burns,That Death ascends, man's most desired star,That Darkness is his hope? The Spring returns!Triumphant through the wider-arched copeShe comes, she comes, unto her tyranny,And at her coronation are set opeThe prisons of the mind, and man is free!The beggar-garbed or over-bent with snows,Each mortal, long defeated, disallowed,Feeling her touch, grows stronger limbed, and knowsThe purple on his shoulders and is proud.The Spring returns! O madness beyond sense,Breed in our bones thine own omnipotence!

Through the silver mistOf the blossom-sprayTrill the orioles: listTo their joyous lay!"What in all the world, in all the world," they say,Is half so sweet, so sweet, is half so sweet as May?"

"June! June! June!"Low croonThe brown bees in the clover."Sweet! sweet! sweet!"RepeatThe robins, nested over.

Lenten ys come with love to toune,With blosmen ant with briddes roune, That al this blisse bryngeth;Dayes-eyes in this dales,Notes suete of nyhtegales, Vch foul song singeth;

The threstlecoc him threteth oo,Away is huere wynter wo, When woderove springeth;This foules singeth ferly fele,Ant wlyteth on huere winter wele, That al the wode ryngeth.

O western wind, when wilt thou blow That the small rain down can rain?Christ, that my love were in my arms And I in my bed again!