MAY-DAY.

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A RHAPSODY BY JEREMY SHORT, ESQ.

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It is April, and the rain is pattering against our window as we write, with a low monotonous tinkle like the far-off music of an evening bell. How every thing has changed since yesterday! The sunlight no longer floods the hill-side—the birds sing not their jocund lays—the brooklet by our window no more goes frolicking onward in its glittering sheen. The sky is dun, spongy, and covered with flitting clouds. The fields are drenched by last night’s rain, and the cattle cower under the sheds in the barn-yard. Yet the south wind has a warmth and freshness in its touch delicious to the fevered brow of a student, and as it breathes through the casement the blood dances more merrily along our veins and we feel a new life within us.

It is April, fickle fooling April, but already one begins to dream of May. And soon it will be here. Oh! how we long for its bright sunshine, its budding flowers, its delicious perfumes, its breezy mornings and its starry nights, reminding us of that better country where the streams sing on forever, where the spring-time never fades, and where all the sainted ones we have loved on earth, purified and made more glorious than ever, await us with their seraphic smiles. May!—bright, beautiful May!—what is like to thy loveliness? The Summer may be full of maturer beauty, the Autumn more like a matron in her queenliness, but thou art as a young and innocent bride, all blushing and trembling in thy tearful gladness. And of all days in May give us the first—the vesperus of her sky—the proudest gem in her coronal.

Is there any thing so exquisite in the older poets as their habit of constantly alluding to the merry sports with which our English ancestors were accustomed to celebrate the first of May? Is there any thing more captivating to the lover of green and sunshiny fields and antique customs, than the dance around the flower-decked pole of the village, with the rosy-cheeked maidens for partners, and the hobby-horse, the morrice-crew, and the combatants of the ring around? Alas! the day for these spectacles has gone forever. Even in merry England the first of May has lost its popularity, and it is only in some quiet dell, secluded among the hills, far away from the metropolis, that the Maypole is wreathed with garlands on the eventful morning, and the blushing beauty is crowned with flowers as queen of May. How many kindly feelings, how many happy hours, how many holy associations have been lost to us by the neglect of this simple rural custom! Far away from home and friends, in lands remote even from his native continent, the sight of a pole decked out with flowers for some pagan festival, has recalled to the wanderer’s mind the happy days of his youth, when he sported with his gay companions on the village lawn, or slily kissed some blushing little beauty who had been his partner on the first of May.

We wish this good old custom could be revived among us, not with its grotesque maskers, but as a day for greenwood sports. We sing “Io Pæn” at the few celebrations which are vouchsafed to us in these degenerate days. Your crabbed utilitarians may talk of its uselessness, and sneer at it as a childish pastime, but who that has a soul for the beautiful in nature can fail to love this merry-making on the greensward? Give us the pure canopy of heaven for our ball-room ceiling—let us dance where the birds may carol around us and the balmy breath of flowers kiss our cheeks. Let us welcome in the blushing month with the young, and beautiful, and gay, feeling as we partake in their sports, as if old Spenser had dreamed of the fair ones around us, when he drew that immortal picture of May:

“Then came faire May, the fayrest mayd on ground,

Deckt all with dainties of her season’s pryde,

And throwing flow’res out of her lap around:

Upon two bretheren’s shoulders she did ride,

The twinnes of Leda; which on either side

Supported her, like to their Soveraine Queene.

Lord! how all creatures laught, when her they spide,

And leapt and daunc’t as they had ravisht beene!

And Cupid selfe about her fluttered all in green.”

Exquisite! “The fayrest mayd on ground!” Have you ever been on a May party? Then do you not remember that blue-eyed one, with the golden tresses, and that small fair hand, whom your eyes followed throughout the whole bright day, and whom you could have gone on your knees and sworn to be not only the loveliest flower of the group, but of the county, aye! for that matter, of the world? You were just nineteen then, and she was in her sixteenth spring, by our faith! You had never met before, but long ere nightfall,—what with wandering through the wood together, or plucking flowers for each other, or lifting her over the pebbly little brook clear and musical as her own pure heart—you have come to feel as if you had known each other for years. And that night you cannot sleep for thinking of her, or if toward morning you drop into a doze, you dream—oh! how sweetly—of your little partner; so sweetly that when you awake, you sigh, and close your eyes, and would give the world if you could only sleep and dream thus of her forever. And you get up and feel even melancholy, wishing all the while that every day was the first of May, and that—for why not?—your golden-haired darling was your constant partner. And that very morning you chance, mind! only chance—to have some business that takes you down the street where she resides, and you happen so accidentally to meet her as she comes forth, looking to your eyes, with her snowy virgin robe, and her blooming cheek, and her neat chip bonnet wreathed around with flowers, more beautiful than ever—aye! more beautiful than you had imagined aught earthly could be, even though “Deckt all with dainties of the season’s pryde.” And so you can but address her—and she happens to be going your way too—and nothing can be more natural than that you should talk about yesterday—and thus you go on smiling and chatting and feeling so joyous withal, that in the very gladness of your heart you can almost carol aloud with the happy birds, or “leap and daunce as you had ravisht beene!” Ah! verily young May-goer thou hast lost thy heart.

And so it proceeds. And you call upon her—as of course you must—to ask her whether she over-fatigued herself on May-day, you having forgotten altogether in your casual meeting to propound to her that question. And when thus calling you find she has a harp or a piano, and as you play on the flute, it is the most natural thing in the world to practise duetts together. Or perhaps you are both learning French, or reading Goethe in the original, or doing something else—no matter what!—which can be better done in company. And by and bye you get so used to these visits, that not an evening passes without beholding you together; and gradually you forget your studies and care less for them, though all the while perhaps you are learning a sweeter lesson; and your golden-haired partner will sigh now—most singular!—so very often; and you yourself will begin to feel your heart flutter when her soft blue eye meets your own by chance, for of late you do not look into each other’s faces as you used to; and so by and bye—heaven only knows how—you will find yourselves sitting side by side on the sofa; a few smothered words will be whispered; you will draw her with a holy embrace toward you; her head will sink upon your bosom; and thus for—it may be five minutes, it may be longer—you will sit in silence, a deep sacred silence, with your hearts quick beating against each other in a rapture no words can tell. And at length you will whisper her name: and with a happy sigh she will look up “smiling tearfully,” as the blind old Sciote has it; and again you will press her to your bosom, breathing your deep, deep love in every word; and she will murmur back your vows, at length, with maidenly whispers, blushing to her bosom the while, and speaking lower than an angel might be thought to sigh. And so—and so—years after, when she sits beside you at your household hearth, with that fair-haired little one smiling on her knee, you will bless God that ever you went a-Maying. Ah! give us the love which comes in the freshness and innocence of youth.

But May-Day is not all that charms us in the blushing month. All through its sunny days there is the song of birds, and the odor of flowers, and the waving of green grass, the more beautiful because we have just emerged, from the snows of Winter, the blustering winds of March, and the fickle skies of April. Everything is budding and breaking into life. If you go out into the fields you can almost hear the grass growing. The garden has a thousand colors, and they all mingle in harmony. The birds greet you at morning beneath your window, and your favorite steed gambols at your approach in wanton joy. The winds murmur low like rushes by the river side, the hills are covered once more with verdure, and the delicious greenness of the meadow land is past the poet’s pen. And most of all, the ONE whom for years you have loved, seems to grow more beautiful daily, smiling and carolling around you, to your eyes more lovely than when you first won her for your bride. May! bright beautiful May, why tarry the wheels of thy chariot?

J. S.

April, 1841.