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. Come with bows bent and with emptying of quivers, Maiden most perfect, lady of light, With a noise of winds and many rivers, With a clamor of waters, and with might; Bind on thy sandals, O thou most fleet, Over the splendor and speed of thy feet; For the faint east quickens, the wan west shivers, Round the feet of the day and the feet of the night. Where shall we find her, how shall we sing to her, O that man's heart were as fire and could spring to her, For the stars and the winds are unto her As raiment, as songs of the harp-player; For the risen stars and the fallen cling to her, For winter's rains and ruins are over, The days dividing lover and lover, The light that loses, the night that wins; And time remembered is grief forgotten, And frosts are slain and flowers begotten, And in green underwood and cover Blossom by blossom the spring begins. The full streams feed on flower of rushes, The chestnut-husk at the chestnut-root. Song And Pan by noon and Bacchus by night, The ivy falls with the Bacchanal's hair 1299 Her bright breast shortening into sighs; To the limbs that glitter, the feet that scare SONG AGAIN rejoicing Nature sees Her robe assume its vernal hues; In vain to me the cowslips blaw, In vain to me in glen or shaw, The mavis and the lintwhite sing. The merry ploughboy cheers his team, A dream of ane that never wauks. The wanton coot the water skims, The stately swan majestic swims, The shepherd steeks his faulding slap, I meet him on the dewy hill. And when the lark, 'tween light and dark, Come, Winter, with thine angry howl, Robert Burns [1759-1796] TO SPRING O THOU with dewy locks, who lookest down The hills tell one another, and the listening Come o'er the eastern hills, and let our winds O deck her forth with thy fair fingers; pour William Blake [1757-1827] An Ode on the Spring 1301 AN ODE ON THE SPRING Lo! where the rosy-bosomed Hours, The untaught harmony of spring: Where'er the oak's thick branches stretch Where'er the rude and moss-grown beech Beside some water's rushy brink How vain the ardor of the crowd, Still is the toiling hand of Care: Yet, hark, how through the peopled air The insect-youth are on the wing, And float amid the liquid noon; To Contemplation's sober eye Such is the race of Man: And they that creep, and they that fly, Alike the Busy and the Gay But flutter through life's little day, Methinks I hear, in accents low, Poor moralist! and what art thou? Thy joys no glittering female meets, We frolic, while 'tis May. SPRING Thomas Gray [1716-1771] SPRING, with that nameless pathos in the air Spring, with her golden suns and silver rain, Out in the lonely woods the jasmine burns Its fragrant lamps, and turns Into a royal court with green festoons The banks of dark lagoons. In the deep heart of every forest tree The blood is all aglee, And there's a look about the leafless bowers As if they dreamed of flowers. Yet still on every side we trace the hand Of Winter in the land, Save where the maple reddens on the lawn, |