May Garden / John Drinkwater

       
May Garden

A shower of green gems on my apple tree
This first morning of May
Has fallen out of the night, to be
Herald of holiday --
Bright gems of green that, fallen there,
Seem fixed and glowing on the air.

Until a flutter of blackbird wings
Shakes and makes the boughs alive,
And the gems are now no frozen things,
But apple-green buds to thrive
On sap of my May garden, how well
The green September globes will tell.

Also my pear tree has its buds
But they are silver-yellow,
Like autumn meadows when the floods
Are silver under willow,
And here shall long and shapely pears
Be gathered while the autumn wears.

And there are sixty daffodils
Beneath my wall. . . .
And jealousy it is that kills
This world when all
The spring's behaviour here is spent
To make the world magnificent.

---
John Drinkwater (1882-1937)
from Tides, 1917

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]

John Drinkwater biography