The Second Book of Modern Verse | Page 5

patient ox-eyes Sank below the white horizon at the north.
At the third hour, it was as if one said, "I thirst";
At the fourth hour,
all the earth was still:
Then the clouds suddenly swung over, stooped,
and burst;
And the rain flooded valley, plain and hill.

At the fifth hour, darkness took the throne;
At the sixth hour, the
earth shook and the wind cried;
At the seventh hour, the hidden seed
was sown;
At the eighth hour, it gave up the ghost and died.
At the ninth hour, they sealed up the tomb;
And the earth was then
silent for the space of three hours. But at the twelfth hour, a single lily
from the gloom
Shot forth, and was followed by a whole host of
flowers.
"There will come Soft Rain". [Sara Teasdale]
There will come soft rain and the smell of the ground,
And swallows
circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum-trees in
tremulous white;
Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low
fence-wire.
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is
done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished
utterly.
And Spring herself when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know
that we were gone.
Spring Song. [William Griffith]
Softly at dawn a whisper stole
Down from the Green House on the
Hill,
Enchanting many a ghostly bole
And wood-song with the
ancient thrill.
Gossiping on the country-side,
Spring and the wandering breezes say,

God has thrown Heaven open wide
And let the thrushes out to-day.

The Day before April. [Mary Carolyn Davies]
The day before April
Alone, alone,
I walked in the woods
And I
sat on a stone.
I sat on a broad stone
And sang to the birds.
The tune was God's
making
But I made the words.
Berkshires in April. [Clement Wood]
It is not Spring -- not yet --
But at East Schaghticoke I saw an ivory
birch
Lifting a filmy red mantle of knotted buds
Above the
rain-washed whiteness of her arms.
It is not Spring -- not yet --
But at Hoosick Falls I saw a robin
strutting,
Thin, still, and fidgety,
Not like the puffed, complacent
ball of feathers
That dawdles over the cidery Autumn loam.
It is not Spring -- not yet --
But up the stocky Pownal hills
Some
springy shrub, a scarlet gash on the grayness,
Climbs, flaming, over
the melting snows.
It is not Spring -- not yet --
But at Williamstown the willows are
young and golden,
Their tall tips flinging the sun's rays back at him;

And as the sun drags over the Berkshire crests,
The willows glow,
the scarlet bushes burn,
The high hill birches shine like purple plumes,

A royal headdress for the brow of Spring.
It is the doubtful,
unquiet end of Winter,
And Spring is pulsing out of the wakening
soil.
In Excelsis. [Thomas S. Jones, Jr.]
Spring!
And all our valleys turning into green,
Remembering --

As I remember! So my heart turns glad
For so much youth and joy --
this to have had
When in my veins the tide of living fire
Was at its
flow;
This to know,
When now the miracle of young desire
Burns

on the hills, and Spring's sweet choristers again
Chant from each tree
and every bush aflame
Love's wondrous name;
This under youth's
glad reign,
With all the valleys turning into green --
This to have
heard and seen!
And Song!
Once to have known what every wakened bird
Has
heard;
Once to have entered into that great harmony
Of love's
creation, and to feel
The pulsing waves of wonder steal
Through all
my being; once to be
In that same sea
Of wakened joy that stirs in
every tree
And every bird; and then to sing --
To sing aloud the
endless Song of Spring!
Waiting, I turn to Thee,
Expectant, humble, and on bended knee;

Youth's radiant fire
Only to burn at Thy unknown desire --
For this
alone has Song been granted me.
Upon Thy altar burn me at Thy will;

All wonders fill
My cup, and it is Thine;
Life's precious wine

For this alone: for Thee.
Yet never can be paid
The debt long laid

Upon my heart, because my lips did press
In youth's glad Spring the
Cup of Loveliness!
Blue Squills. [Sara Teasdale]
How many million Aprils came
Before I ever knew
How white a
cherry bough could be,
A bed of squills, how blue.
And many a dancing April
When life is done with me,
Will lift the
blue flame of the flower
And the white flame of the tree.
Oh, burn me with your beauty, then,
Oh, hurt me, tree and flower,

Lest in the end death try to take
Even this glistening hour.
O shaken flowers, O shimmering trees,
O sunlit white and blue,

Wound me, that I through endless sleep
May bear the scar of you.
Earth. [John Hall Wheelock]

Grasshopper, your fairy song
And my poem alike belong
To the
dark and silent earth
From which all poetry has birth;
All we say
and all we sing
Is but as the murmuring
Of that drowsy heart of
hers
When from her deep dream she stirs:
If we sorrow, or rejoice,

You and I are but