Spring

I said in my heart, “I am sick of four walls and a ceiling. I have need of the sky. I have business with the grass. I will up and get me away where the hawk is wheeling, Lone and high, And the slow clouds go by. I will get me away to the waters that glass The clouds as they pass, To the waters that lie Like the heart of a maiden aware of a doom drawing nigh And dumb for sorcery of impending joy. I will get me away to the woods. Spring, like a huntsman’s boy, Halloos along the hillsides and unhoods The falcon in my will. The dogwood calls me, and the sudden thrill That breaks in apple blooms down country roads Plucks me by the sleeve and nudges me away. The sap is in the boles today, And in my veins a pulse that yearns and goads.” When I got to the woods, I found out What the Spring was about, With her gypsy ways, And her heart ablaze, Coming up from the South With the wander-lure of witch songs in her mouth. For the sky Stirred and grew soft and swimming as a lover’s eye As she went by; The air Made love to all it touched, as if its care Were all to spare; The earth Prickled with lust of birth; The woodland streams Babbled the incoherence of the thousand dreams Wherewith the warm sun teems. And out of the frieze Of the chestnut trees I heard The sky and the fields and the thickets find voice in a bird. The goldenwing—hark! How he drives his song Like a golden nail Through the hush of the air! I thrill to his cry in the leafage there; I respond to the new life mounting under the bark. I shall not be long To follow With eft and bulrush, bee and bud and swallow, On the old trail. Spring in the world! And all things are made new! There was never a mote that whirled In the nebular morn, There was never a brook that purled Where the hills were born, There was never a leaf uncurled⁠— Not the first that grew⁠— Nor a bee-flight hurled, Nor a bird-note skirled, Nor a cloud-wisp swirled In the depth of the blue, More alive and afresh and impromptu, more thoughtless and certain and free, More a-shout with the glee Of the Unknown new-burst on the wonder, than here, than here, In the re-wrought sphere Of the new-born year⁠— Now, now, When the greenlet sings on the red-bud bough Where the blossoms are whispering “I and thou”—“I and thou,” And a lass at the turn looks after a lad with a dawn on her brow, And the world is just made—now! Spring in the heart! With her pinks and pearls and yellows! Spring, fellows, And we too feel the little green leaves a-start Across the bare-twigged winter of the mart. The campus is reborn in us today; The old grip stirs our hearts with new-old joy; Again bursts bonds for madcap holiday The eternal boy.