Poems (Curwen)/Spring

by Annie Isabel Curwen

For works with similar titles, see Spring.

Spring.

Awake! awake! Dame Nature cries,
  Awake and greet the Spring.
A myriad dainty blossoms rise,
And open wide their starry eyes;
  A myriad songbirds sing
   In wood and glade
   A serenade,
  To welcome lovely Spring.

Clad in her daisy 'broidered gown,
  And crowned with daffodils,
She trips across the meadows brown,
Chasing from Nature's face the frown,
  As joyously she trills
   Her merry lay,
   Which floats away,
  Like music, to the hills.

She kisses Winter, bluff old King,
  Or ever he can go.
He bows his hoary head to Spring,
Saying, "You are a winsome thing,"
  Then strews her path with snow—
   An offering meet
   For her pure feet,
  Which makes her sweet face glow

She listens to the lovers' vows,
  To labour gives her blessing;
She cheers the farmer as he ploughs,
And dances 'neath the naked boughs,
  Calling in tones caressing
   To bud and leaf,
   "My time is brief,
  So hasten with your dressing."

She works and sings the livelong day,
  And sets ambition climbing;
She drives our morbid fears away
With sunny smiles and carols gay,
  And sets Hope's bells a-chiming.
   Thus do we sing
   Of lovely Spring,
  Who sets the poets rhyming.