Spring in Verse

Sweetest of the flowers a–blooming
In the fragrant vernal days
Is the Lily of the Valley
With its soft, retiring ways.

Well, you chose this humble blossom
As the nurse’s emblem flower,
Who grows more like her ideal
Every day and every hour.

Like the Lily of the Valley
In her honesty and worth,
Ah, she blooms in truth and virtue
In the quiet nooks of earth.

Tho’ she stands erect in honor
When the heart of mankind bleeds,
Still she hides her own deserving
In the beauty of her deeds.

In the silence of the darkness
Where no eye may see and know,
There her footsteps shod with mercy,
And fleet kindness come and go.

Not amid the sounds of plaudits,
Nor before the garish day,
Does she shed her soul’s sweet perfume,
Does she take her gentle way.

But alike her ideal flower,
With its honey–laden breath,
Still her heart blooms forth its beauty
In the valley shades of death.

To be born in the sweet tropic spring-time
When honey-steeped breezes sing low;
When birds in the oranges mating
‘Midst their bridal-wreath swing to-and-fro;
When even the pine-boughs, each breathing low cheer,
Lover-like bow to the jessamine near,
And always—cool voicing from palm-choired ocean
Echo dreamings ‘tis gladness to know.

Oh! To be born in this sweet southern spring-time
Is to be heir of its joy; the child of its play;
Is to throb to the tune of the sweet-pulsing music
Unloosed from the harp of a South-loving Fay;
Is to feel the deep bond of this sensuous Beauty,
The sweet-yielding secrets of tropical May.

Oh, wind of the spring–time, oh, free wind of May,
When blossoms and bird–song are rife;
Oh, joy for the season, and joy for the day,
That gave me the roses of life, of life,
That gave me the roses of life.

Oh, wind of the summer, sing loud in the night,
When flutters my heart like a dove;
One came from thy kingdom, thy realm of delight,
And gave me the roses of love, of love,
And gave me the roses of love.

Oh, wind of the winter, sigh low in thy grief,
I hear thy compassionate breath;
I wither, I fall, like the autumn–kissed leaf,
He gave me the roses of death, of death,
He gave me the roses of death.

In the merry month of May
When green leaves begin to spring,
Little lambs do skip like fairies,
Birds do couple, build, and sing.

An altered look about the hills;
A Tyrian light the village fills;
A wider sunrise in the dawn;
A deeper twilight on the lawn;
A print of a vermilion foot;
A purple finger on the slope;
A flippant fly upon the pane;
A spider at his trade again;
An added strut in chanticleer;
A flower expected everywhere;
An axe shrill singing in the woods;
Fern-odors on untravelled roads, —
All this, and more I cannot tell,
A furtive look you know as well,
And Nicodemus’ mystery
Receives its annual reply.