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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
BUCOLIC COMEDY: SPRING, by EDITH SITWELL Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: When spring begins, the maids in flocks Last Line: Singing their cold, forlorn madrigals. Subject(s): Spring | |||
WHEN spring begins, the maids in flocks Walk in soft fields, and their sheepskin locks Fall shadowless, soft as music, round Their jonquil eyelids, and reach the ground. Where the small fruit-buds begin to harden Into sweet tunes in the palace garden, They peck at the fruit-buds' hairy herds With their lips like the gentle bills of birds. * * * * * But King Midas heard the swan-bosomed sky Say "All is surface and so must die." And he said: "it is spring; I will have a feast To woo eternity; for my least Palace is like a berg of ice; And the spring winds, for birds of paradise, With the leaping goat-footed waterfalls cold, Shall be served for me on a dish of gold By a maiden fair as an almond-tree, With hair like the waterfalls' goat-locks; she Has lips like that jangling harsh pink rain, The flower-bells that spirt on the trees again." In Midas' garden the simple flowers Laugh, and the tulips are bright as the showers, For spring is here; the auriculas, And the Emily-coloured primulas Bob in their pinafores on the grass As they watch the gardener's daughter pass. Then King Midas said, "At last I feel Eternity conquered beneath my heel Like the glittering snake of Paradise -- And you are my Eve!" -- but the maiden flies, Like the leaping goat-footed waterfalls Singing their cold, forlorn madrigals. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SPRING LEMONADE by TONY HOAGLAND A SPRING SONG by LYMAN WHITNEY ALLEN SPRING'S RETURN by GEORGE LAWRENCE ANDREWS ODE TO SPRING by ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD ODE TO SPRING by ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD SPRING FLOODS by MAURICE BARING SPRING IN WINTER by CHARLOTTE FISKE BATES SPRING ON THE PRAIRIE by HERBERT BATES THE FARMER'S BOY: SPRING by ROBERT BLOOMFIELD AN OLD WOMAN: 2. HARVEST by EDITH SITWELL |
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