Sunday, May 28, 2023

May Day / Sara Teasdale


May Day

A delicate fabric of bird song
    Floats in the air,
The smell of wet wild earth
    Is everywhere.

Red small leaves of the maple
    Are clenched like a hand,
Like girls at their first communion
    The pear trees stand.

Oh I must pass nothing by
    Without loving it much,
The raindrop try with my lips,
    The grass with my touch;

For how can I be sure
    I shall see again
The world on the first of May
    Shining after the rain?

~~
Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)
from Flame and Shadow, 1920

[Poems are in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]

Sara Teasdale biography

"May Day" (read by Annie Coleman). Courtesy YouTube.

1 comment:

  1. That is lovely George Dance. It sure is a great experience to have it read to you. I'd like to learn how to do this... some day. Every second line in each stanza rhymes, noted. Again/rain, a slant rhyme, fine. I just wrote a rain poem: And the Rain Came Down in Torrents. Has this refrain: "And the rain came down in torrents, / And washed all that was evil away." 🥰

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