There's hunting for the young ones And wine for the old, And a sexton in the churchyard Digging in the cold. Cosmo Monkhouse [1840-1901] TURN O' THE YEAR THIS is the time when bit by bit This is the time the sun, of late This is the time we dock the night When song of linnet and thrush is heard— This is the time when sword-blades green, With gold and purple damascene, Pierce the brown crocus-bed a-row- And love stirs in a heart I know. Katharine Tynan [1861 THE WAKING YEAR A LADY red upon the hill Her annual secret keeps; The tidy breezes with their brooms The neighbors do not yet suspect! Early Spring And yet how still the landscape stands, How nonchalant the wood, As if the resurrection Were nothing very odd! 1291 Emily Dickinson [1830-1886] SONG From "Pippa Passes" THE year's at the spring, The hill-side's dew-pearled; The snail's on the thorn; God's in His Heaven All's right with the world! Robert Browning [1812-1889] EARLY SPRING ONCE more the Heavenly Power Makes all things new, And domes the red-plowed hills With loving blue; The blackbirds have their wills, The throstles too. Opens a door in Heaven; From skies of glass A Jacob's ladder falls On greening grass, Young angels pass. Before them fleets the shower, And burst the buds, And shine the level lands, And flash the floods; The stars are from their hands Flung through the woods, The woods with living airs Light airs from where the deep, All down the sand, Is breathing in his sleep, Heard by the land. O, follow, leaping blood, The season's lure! O heart, look down and up, Warm as the crocus cup, Like snow-drops, pure! Past, Future glimpse and fade And sympathies, how frail, In sound and smell! Till at thy chuckled note, Thou twinkling bird, And, lightly stirred, For now the Heavenly Power Makes all things new, The flower with dew; The blackbirds have their wills, The poets too. Alfred Tennyson [1809-1892] LINES WRITTEN IN EARLY SPRING I HEARD a thousand blended notes, While in a grove I sat reclined, In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts In Early Spring To her fair works did Nature link The human soul that through me ran; Through primrose tufts, in that sweet bower, The birds around me hopped and played, But the least motion which they made The budding twigs spread out their fan And I must think, do all I can, If this belief from heaven be sent, What Man has made of Man? 1293 William Wordsworth [1770-1850] IN EARLY SPRING O SPRING, I know thee! Seek for sweet surprise But I have learnt the years, and know the yet Mine ear, awake to silence, can foretell The cuckoo's fitful bell. I wander in a gray time that encloses A year's procession of the flowers doth pass And all you sweet birds silent yet, I know The notes that stir you so, |