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A Spring Bouquet of Poetry
In celebration of the first day of Spring.
Spring is a happiness so beautiful,
so unique, so unexpected,
that I don't know what to do with my heart.
I dare not take it,
I dare not leave it—
What do you advise?
Emily Dickinson
New Poems # 250
Earliest Spring
Tossing his mane of snows in wildest eddies and tangles,
Lion-like March cometh in, hoarse, with tempestuous breath,
Through all the moaning chimneys, and 'thwart all the hollows and angles
Round the shuddering house, threating of winter and death.
But in my heart I feel the life of the wood and the meadow
Thrilling the pulses that own kindred with fibres that lift
Bud and blade to the sunward, within the inscrutable shadow,
Deep in the oak's chill core, under the gathering drift.
Nay, to earth's life in mine some prescience, or dream, or desire
(How shall I name it aright?) comes for a moment and goes—
Rapture of life ineffable, perfect—as if in the brier,
Leafless there by my door, trembled a sense of the rose.
William Dean Howells
The Oxford Book of English Verse (1900) # 812
ed. Arthur Quiller-Couch
O sweet spontaneous
earth how often have
the
doting
fingers of
prurient philosophers pinched
and
poked
thee
,has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy
beauty .how
often have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy knees
squeezing and
buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
(but
true
to the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover
thou answerest
them only with
spring)
E. E. Cummings
Collected Poems (1904-1962) p. 58
ed. George J. Firmage
Spring is the Period
Express from God.
Among the other seasons
Himself abide,
But during March and April
None stir abroad
Without a cordial interview
With God.
Emily Dickinson
Complete Poems # 844
ed. Thomas J. Johnson
Spring Pools
These pools that, though in forests, still reflect
The total sky almost without defect,
And like the flowers beside them, chill and shiver,
Will like the flowers beside them soon be gone,
And yet not out by any brook or river,
But up by roots to bring dark foliage on.
The trees that have it in their pent-up buds
To darken nature and be summer woods—
Let them think twice before they use their powers
To blot out and drink up and sweep away
These flowery waters and these watery flowers
From snow that melted only yesterday.
Robert Frost
Poetry p. 245
ed. Edward Connery Lathem
Spring
Nothing is so beautiful as Spring—
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.
What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth's sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden.—Have, get, before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid's child, thy choice and worthy the winning.
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Poems (4th ed.) # 33
ed. W. H. Gardner and N. H. MacKenzie
The Violets are by my side,
the Robin very near,
and "Spring"—they say,
Who is she—
going by the door—
Indeed it is God's house—
and these are gates of Heaven,
and to and fro,
the angels go,
with their sweet postillions—
Emily Dickinson
New Poems # 210
ed. William H. Shurr
Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere)arranging
a window,into which people look(while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here) and
changing everything carefully
spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and fro moving New and
Old things,while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there)and
without breaking anything.
E. E. Cummings
Collected Poems (1904-1962) p. 197
ed. George J. Firmage
A Prayer in Spring
Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.
Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.
And make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard,
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid-air stands still.
For this is love and nothing else is love,
The which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends He will,
But which it only needs that we fulfill.
Robert Frost
Poetry p. 12
ed. Edward Connery Lathem
[See also A Fall Bouquet of Poetry.]
Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Fri. 03/21/03 02:23:23 PM
Categorized as Literary & Most Notable.
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