Lines in Late March / John G. Neihardt

Lines in Late March

I whistle: why not?
Have I not seen the first strips of green winding up the sloughs?
Have I not heard the meadow-lark?
I have looked into the soft blue skies and have been uplifted!

Where are the doubts and dark ideas I entertained?
What have I caught from the maple-buds that changes me?
Or was it the meadow-lark – or the blue sky – or the strips of green?
The green that winds up the sloughs?

I sought the dark and found much of it.
Is there in truth much darkness?
Have the meadow-larks lied to me?
Have the green grass and the blue sky testified falsely ?

I want to trust the sky and the grass!
I want to believe the songs I hear from the fence-posts!
Why should a maple-bud mislead me?

~~ 

John G. Neihardt (1881-1973)

from A Bundle of Myrrh, 1907

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

John G. Neihardt biography

Young World / Louise Morey Bowman

Young World

Passionate March winds called in the wild, grey trees this morning.
The frozen brook
Has suddenly become a broad and turbulent stream,
Rushing through the deep ravine,
Swirling about the banks and bending bushes.
Winter is vanquished.
Yet in the harsh, raw air,
In the wet, clinging slime of mud and clay,
And lowering sky and bare, wind-tortured branches,
There lies no beauty or peace.
Peace that has brooded in austere purity
On the white snow-fields sleeping in amber sunshine;
Beauty in magical jade and diamond ice,
Or feathery, silvery powder of new-fallen snow.

But with the rushing of streams and winds there came
Stirring of unborn hopes. . . .
Passion, unrest, yearning, deep discontent,
Something that might become, all suddenly,
Joy. . . .
In an instant passing.
I have felt all day
This sense of questing youth throughout the world.

Before the day had passed,
Waiting in a crowded thoroughfare,
Two Chinamen appeared:
Immobile, passive, enigmatic beings,
Watching the ways of men with the Orient's weird gaze,
Lids dropping low over dim, slanting eyes.

One heavily muffled, seemed to be in pain,
That only his dark, claw-like hands revealed
In a slow writhing, half-hidden in his sleeves.
No other movement in mask-like face or form.
There for an instant I saw old China brooding,
Ancient old
Weighed with the burdens and pains of long, unfathomed, years.
And from those low-caste forms inscrutable,
My thoughts turned to sages, philosophers,
With essence of three religions mingled in their brains.
Calm ivory hands holding vast mystic keys

Weary I climbed the hill and now I sit beside my fire
While darkness gathers in,
Pondering a little while about the world,
The world that suddenly seemed old, dark, worn, this afternoon,
As men and women feel suddenly old sometimes
In an instant's passing.
Joy yields to sorrow.
Passion turns to pain.
But listen – soul of me!
Out in the strange March evening
Passionate winds are calling,
Even louder than they did in the grey morning.
The swollen stream rushes on.
O Youth of Springtime
Youth!
What passion, hope, freedom, in your untutored song:

    The world is young, young, young tonight!

    What will tomorrow bring?
~~
Louise Morey Bowman (1882-1944)
from Moonlight and Common Day, 1922

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

Louise Morey Bowman biography

The Coming of Spring: Madrid / Arthur Symons

The Coming of Spring: Madrid

Spring is come back, and the little voices are calling,
The birds are calling, the little green buds on the trees,
A song in the street, and an old and sleepy tune;
All the sounds of the spring are falling, falling,
Gentle as rain, on my heart, and I hear all these
As a sick man hears men talk from the heart of a swoon.

The clamours of spring are the same old delicate noises.
The earth renews its magical youth at a breath.
And the whole world whispers a well-known, secret thing;
And I hear, but the meaning has faded out of the voices;
Something has died in my heart: is it death or sleep?
I know not, but I have forgotten the meaning of spring.

~~
Arthur Symons (1865-1945)
from Poems, 1902

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

Arthur Symons biography

On the First Morning of Spring / A.Y. Campbell

On the First Morning of Spring

A magic message ran
     And touched the sleeping trees:
This morning Spring began
     With swift and sudden ease.

The air is full of light,
     Green is the happy ground;
Our Winter of last night
     Is gone without a sound.

Like a delusion, gone,
     As it had never been;
Through forests flies the Faun,
     And breasts the zephyrs keen.

'Tis youth the season sings.
     Yet it is hardly youth
Which most securely clings
     To Spring's delight and truth.

Her gospel kind and sure
     That man shall best appraise
Whose spirit is mature
     Whether from length of days,

Or that far happier he
     Whom, though still young in years
A rare precocity
     To Wisdom's self endears.

In whom ripe enterprise
     With insight is combined;
Who youthful ardour ties
     To a well-tempered mind.

He only can afford
     Experience to forego,
For Instinct will accord
     All that he needs to know.

Blest above all is he,
     Age shall his strength revere,
His actions shall be free,
     And his advancement clear.

Because he knows thee, Life,
     Thy course he shall control;
Shall conquer without strife,
     And smiling reach his goal.

His youthful dreams are sweet,
     But he shall understand:
Thy fruits are at his feet,
     Thy triumphs in his hand.

~~
A.Y. Campbell (1885-1958)
from Poems, 1912

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

A.Y. Campbell biography

A Patch of Old Snow / Robert Frost

A Patch of Old Snow

There’s a patch of old snow in a corner
     That I should have guessed
Was a blow-away paper the rain
     Had brought to rest.

It is speckled with grime as if
     Small print overspread it,
The news of a day I’ve forgotten –
     If I ever read it.

~~
Robert Frost (1874-1963)
from Mountain Interval, 1916

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

Robert Frost biography

"A Patch of Old Snow" read by The Wordman. Courtesy poemrecital.

The Intruder / Grace Stone Coates

The Intruder

Across my book your hand augustly reaches —
     Thrusts it away.
I turn impatient to the window, watching
     The tossed trees’ play,
March sunshine glinting on a chilly rain-pool
     That snow-banks frame.
A lusty wind comes gusting on its errand
     And names your name.

Captive, defeated, having striven I yield me
     To thought awhile;      
Letting the sunlight on the roughened waters
     Bear me your smile;
Hearing the mischief-making wind that named you
     Question afresh
If spirit find in spirit full contentment
     Only through flesh.

~~
Grace Stone Coates (1881-1976)
from Poetry, 1921

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

Grace Stone Coates biography

Late Snow / J.C. Squire

Late Snow 

The heavy train through the dim country went rolling, rolling,
Interminably passing misty snow-covered plough-land ridges
That merged in the snowy sky; came turning meadows, fences,
Came gullies and passed, and ice-coloured streams under frozen bridges.

Across the travelling landscape evenly drooped and lifted
The telegraph wires, thick ropes of snow in the windless air;
They drooped and paused and lifted again to unseen summits,
Drawing the eyes and soothing them, often, to a drowsy stare.

Singly in the snow the ghosts of trees were softly pencilled,
Fainter and fainter, in distance fading, into nothingness gliding,
But sometimes a crowd of the intricate silver trees of fairyland
Passed, close and intensely clear, the phantom world hiding.

O untroubled these moving mantled miles of shadowless shadows,
And lovely the film of falling flakes, so wayward and slack;
But I thought of many a mother-bird screening her nestlings,
Sitting silent with wide bright eyes, snow on her back.

~~
J.C. Squire (1884-1958)
from Poems: Second series, 1922

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

J.C. Squire biography