Spring Morning / Frances Cornford

Spring Morning

Now the moisty wood discloses
Wrinkled leaves of primèroses,
While the birds, they flute and sing:
Build your nests, for here is Spring.

All about the open hills
Daises shew their peasant frills,
Washed and white and newly spun
For a festival of sun.

Like a blossom from the sky,
Drops a yellow butterfly.
Dancing down the hedges grey
Snow-bestrewn till yesterday.

Squirrels skipping up the trees
Smell how Spring is in the breeze,
While the birds, they flute and sing:
Build your nests, for here is Spring.

~~
Frances Cornford (1886-1960)
from Spring Morning, 1923

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

Frances Cornford biography

Jonathan Billinger, Spring Morning, April 2013. CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.