I THE world to-day is a nun in gray, And the wind is her wailing prayer To God, to give her a soul like May, Flower-sweet, white, and fair. II Still as a lake at even is the air; The heavens are hid; I mark not anywhere A hopeful sign hung out by plain or hill; Only the etched brown trees and barren fields are there. How like a madman's dream the thought of June! Shall this warped pipe e'er swell with some soft tune That calls for liquid stops and languorous skill, The piper lying prone beneath a summer moon? III The mystery And magic of the spring! It seizes on this bleak and sullen thing Called March, and see! Bland skies, faint odors as of slumbering flowers, Faint bird-songs in the bowers, A soft south wind, and, cradled in the wood, As sweet as womanhood, As shy as any maiden lured by love, The dimly flushed arbutus bloom above The harsh earth soon will peer, And April airs be here! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THAT VAGRANT MISTRAL VEXING THE SUN: A FAR CRY by DARA WIER THE DEATH OF LEONIDAS by GEORGE CROLY EMERSON by MARY ELIZABETH MAPES DODGE BETWEEN THE LINES by WILFRID WILSON GIBSON HIS CAVALIER by ROBERT HERRICK AT LAST by JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER |