The Waking of Earth / Charles G.D. Roberts

The Waking of Earth

With shy bright clamour the live brooks sparkle and run.
     Freed flocks confer about the farmstead ways.
     The air's a wine of dreams and shining haze,
Beaded with bird-notes thin, — for Spring's begun!
The sap flies upward. Death is over and done.
     The glad earth wakes; the glad light breaks; the days
     Grow round, grow radiant. Praise for the new life! Praise
For bliss of breath and blood beneath the sun!

What potent wizardry the wise earth wields,
To conjure with a perfume! From bare fields
     The sense drinks in a breath of furrow and sod.
And lo, the bound of days and distance yields;
     And fetterless the soul is flown abroad,
     Lord of desire and beauty, like a God!

---
Charles G.D. Roberts
from Songs of the Common Day, 1893

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

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