Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
America: Vols. XXV–XXIX. 1876–79.
Spring in Town
By William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878)T
Waiting for May to call its violets forth,
And June its roses,—showers and sunshine bring,
Slowly, the deepening verdure o’er the earth;
To put their foliage out, the woods are slack,
And one by one the singing-birds come back.
Comes earlier. Let a mild and sunny day,
Such as full often, for a few bright hours,
Breathes through the sky of March the airs of May,
Shine on our roofs and chase the wintry gloom—
And lo! our borders glow with sudden bloom.
Gorgeous as are a rivulet’s banks in June,
That overhung with blossoms, through its glen,
Slides soft away beneath the sunny noon,
And they who search the untrodden wood for flowers
Meet in its depths no lovelier ones than ours.
Or the dark drop that on the pansy lies,
And foreheads, white, as when in clusters set,
The anemones by forest fountains rise;
And the spring-beauty boasts no tenderer streak
Than the soft red on many a youthful cheek.
Soft voices and light laughter wake the street,
Like notes of woodbirds, and where’er the eye
Threads the long way, plumes wave, and twinkling feet
Fall light, as hastes that crowd of beauty by.
The ostrich, hurrying o’er the desert space,
Scarce bore those tossing plumes with fleeter pace.
Is theirs, but a light step of freest grace,
Light as Camilla’s o’er the unbent corn,—
A step that speaks the spirit of the place,
Since Quiet, meek old dame, was driven away
To Sing-Sing and the shores of Tappan bay.