In April / David Morton

from The Town:

III

In April

The way of Spring with little steepled towns
    Is such a shy, transforming sorcery
Of special lights and swift, incredible crowns,
    That grave men wonder how such things may be.
No friendly spire, no daily-trodden way
    But somehow alters in the April air,
Grown dearer still, on some enchanted day,
    For shining garments they have come to wear.

The way the spring comes to our Town is such
    That something quickens in the hearts of men,
Turning them lovers at its subtle touch,
    Till they must lift their heads again — again —
As lovers do, with frank, adoring eyes,
Where the long street of lifted steeples lies.

~~
David Morton (1886-1957)
from Ships in Harbor, and other poems, 1921

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

David Morton biography