March / Jane G. Austin

March

There is no month so fair a type of life
In its first conscious strength and joy of strife
        As thou, wild moon of March!
Thou with they hurtling storms and soft blue sky
Within whose depths the great white cumuli
        Sleep under heaven's arch.

Thou with thy swift chill winds that snatch the breath
From pouting lips and swoop to grewsome death
        The sailor and his ship,
And then in sudden sunburst triumphing
Make rainbows in the shining drops that cling
        Upon his frozen lip.

I love thee well, nay, but I love thee not,
How can I tell if I do love or not,
        Unstable and untrue!
The raging lion now, and now the lamb,
The winter's blast, laden with springtide balm,
        O wild March, which is you?

A type of life, yea, of thy life, O friend!
And yet I know not thy life to the end:
        Thy life holds better things.
And March holds May, and May sweet summertime,
And summer dies and in its death sublime
        The grain of autumn brings.

~~
Jane G. Austin (1831-1894)
from Through the Year with the Poets: March, 1886

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Jane G. Austin biography

    Henri Camus, Storm at Pors-Loubous, France, March 2007. CC BY 1.0, Wikimedia Commons.