Showery Time
The April rain-drops tinkle
In cuckoo-cups of gold,
And warm south winds unwrinkle
The buds the peach-boughs hold.
In countless fluted creases
The little elm-leaves show,
While white as carded fleeces
The dogwood blossoms blow.
A rosy robe is wrapping
The early red-bud trees;
But still the haws are napping,
Nor heed the honey-bees.
And still in lazy sleeping
The apple-buds are bound,
But tulip-tips are peeping
From out the garden ground.
And yonder, gayly swinging
Upon the turning vane,
A robin redbreast singing
Makes merry at the rain!
A Rain Song
Tinkle, tinkle,
Lightly fall
On the peach buds, pink and small;
Tip the tiny grass, and twinkle
On the clover, green and tall.
Tinkle, tinkle,-
Faster now,
Little rain-drops, smite and sprinkle
Cherry-bloom and apple-bough!
Pelt the elms, and show them how
You can dash!
And splash! splash! splash!
While the thunder rolls and mutters,
And the lightnings flash and flash!
Then eddy into curls
Of a million misty swirls,
And thread the air with silver, and embroider it with pearls!
And patter, patter, patter
To a quicker time, and clatter
On the streaming window-pane;
Rain, rain,
On the leaves,
And the eaves,
And the turning weather-vane!
Rush in torrents from the tip
Of the gable-peak, and drip
In the garden-bed, and fill
All the cuckoo-cups, and pour
More and more
In the tulip-bowls, and still
Overspill
In a crystal tide until
Every yellow daffodil
Is flooded to its golden rim, and brimming o'er and o'er!
Then as gently as the low
Muffled whir of robin wings,
Or a sweep of silver strings,
Even so,
Take your airy April flight
Through the merry April light,
And melt into a mist of rainy music as you go!
Flood-Time on the Marshes
DEAR marshes, by no hand of man
Laboriously sown,
My river clasps you in its arms
And claims you for its own!
It laughs, and laughs, and twinkles on
Across the reedy soil,
That heed of harvest vexes not,
Nor need of any toil.
And in my heart I joy to know
That safe within this spot
Sweet nature reigns; let other fields
Bear bread, it matters not.
—What matters aught of anything
When one may drift away
Into the realms of all-delight,
As I drift on to-day?
Beneath the budded swamp-rose sprays
The blue-eyed grasses stand,
Submerged within a crystal world,
A limpid wonderland;
And where the clustered sedges show
Their silky-tasselled sheaves,
The slender arrow-lily lifts
Its quiver of green leaves.
The tiny waves lap softly past,
So musical and round,
I think they must be moulded out
Of sunshine and sweet sound.
And here and there some little knoll,
More lofty than the rest,
Stands out above the happy tide,
An island of the blest;
Where fringed with lacy fronds of fern
The grass grows rich and high,
And flowering spider-worts have caught
The color of the sky;
Where water-oaks are thickly strung
With green and golden balls,
And from tall tilting iris tips
The wild canary calls.
—O gracious world! I seem to feel
A kinship with the trees;
I am first-cousin to the marsh,
A sister to the breeze!
My heartstrings tremble to its touch,
In throbs supremely sweet,
And through my pulses light and life
And love divinely meet.
Far off, the sunbeams smite the woods,
And pearly fleeces sail
Athwart the light, and leave below
A purple-shadowed trail;
The essence of the perfect June
So subtly is distilled,
Until my very soul of souls
Is filled, and overfilled!