SPRING SPRING
When Spring unlocks the flowers to paint the laughing soil.
Bishop Heber—Hymn for Seventh Sunday after Trinity.
The spring's already at the gate
With looks my care beguiling;
The country round appeareth straight
A flower-garden smiling.
Heine—Book of Songs. Catherine. No. 6.
The beauteous eyes of the spring's fair night
With comfort are downward gazing.
Heine—Book of Songs. New Spring. No. 3.
I come, I come! ye have called me long,
I come o'er the mountain with light and song:
Ye may trace my step o'er the wakening earth,
By 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.
Felicia D. Hemans—Voice of Spring.
Sweet Spring, full of sweet dayes and roses,
A box where sweets compacted lie,
My musick shows ye have your closes,
And all must die.
| author = Herbert
| work = The Church. Vertue. St. 3.
For surely in the blind deep-buried roots
Of all men's souls to-day
A secret quiver shoots.
Richard Hovey—Spring.
They know who keep a broken tryst,
Till something from the Spring be missed
We have not truly known the Spring.
Robert Underwood Johnson—The Wistful
All flowers of Spring are not May's own;
The crocus cannot often kiss her;
The snow-drop, ere she comes, has flown:—
The earliest violets always miss her.
Lucy Larcom—The Sister Months.
And softly came the fair young queen
O'er mountain, dale, and dell;
And where her golden light was seen
An emerald shadow fell.
The good-wife oped the window wide,
The good-man spanned his plough;
'Tis time to run, 'tis time to ride,
For Spring is with us now.
Leland—Spring.
The lovely town was white with apple-blooms,
And the great elms o'erhead
Dark shadows wove on their aerial looms,
Shot through with golden thread.
| author = Longfellow
| work = Hawthorne. St. 2.
.
Came the Spring with all its splendor,
All its birds and all its blossoms,
All its flowers, and leaves, and grasses.
| author = Longfellow
| work = Hiawatha. Pt. XXI. L. 109.
Thus came the lovely spring with a rush of
blossoms and music,
Flooding the earth with flowers, and the air with
melodies vernal.
| author = Longfellow
| work = Tales of a Wayside Inn. Pt. III. The Theologian's Tale. Elizabeth.
The holy spirit of the Spring
Is working silently.
George MacDonald—Songs of the Spring
Days. Pt. II.
Awake! the morning shines, and the fresh field
Calls us; we lose the prime, to mark how spring
Our tended plants, how blows the citron grove,
What drops the myrrh, and what the balmy reed. How nature paints her colours, how the bee
Sits on the bloom, extracting liquid sweet.
| author = Milton
| work = Paradise Lost.
| place = Bk. V. L. 20.
On many a green branch swinging,
Little birdlets singing
Warble sweet notes in the air.
Flowers fanThere I found.
Green spread the meadow all around.
Nithart—Spring-Song. Trans, in The Minnesinger of Germany.
Yet Ah, that Spring should vanish with the Rose.
That Youth's sweet-scented manuscript should
close!
The Nightingale that in the branches sang
Ah whence and whither flown again, who knows?
Omar Khayyam—Rubaiyat. FitzGerald's
Trans. St. 96.
Gentle Spring!—in sunshine clad,
Well dost thou thy power display!
For Winter maketh the light heart sad,
And thou,—thou makest the sad heart gay.
Charles d'Orleans—Spring. Longfellow's trans.
Hark! the hours are softly calling
Bidding Spring arise,
To listen to the rain-drops falling
From the cloudy skies,
To listen to Earth's weary voices,
Louder every day,
Bidding her no longer linger
On her charm'd way ;
But hasten to her task of beauty
Scarcely yet begun.
Adelaide A. Procter—Spring.
I wonder if the sap is stirring yet,
If wintry birds are dreaming of a mate,
If frozen snowdrops feel as yet the sun,
And crocus fires are kindling one by one.
Christina G. Rossetti—The First Spring
Day. St. 1.
t
There is no time like Spring,
When life's alive in everything,
Before new nestlings sing,
Before cleft swallows speed their journey back
Along the trackless track.
Christina G. Rossetti—Spring. St. 3.
