Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SPRING FANTASIES: 1. MAY DAY IN MARCH, by RICHARD EUGENE BURTON


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SPRING FANTASIES: 1. MAY DAY IN MARCH, by                 Poet's Biography
First Line: March with her madcap winds, march with her weather
Last Line: Twas ever anything on earth but may!
Subject(s): Faith; Fantasy; March (month); May (month); Seasons; Soul; Spring; Belief; Creed


MARCH with her madcap winds, March with her weather,
Has vanished, -- in her place
Has come such day of grace
As May might bring: you wonder whether
'Tis all a dream,
A thing light like a feather,
Blown by a breath to nothingness again.

Birds blithely chirp, buds ope to tell their joy
And from earth's aged mood there wells --
Hark, how it wells and swells! --
The clear song of a boy.
The robins' rhyme,
The green of willows by the turbulent brook,
The pink and white of orchard trees,
The odorous arbutus in her nook,
All, all of these
Do testify their gladness, -- magic time!

A month before her coming-in, the earth,
The dear old foster mother, fain of life,
To beauty and to hope has given birth,
Twin children of her travail and her strife;
And man walks in a very trance of bliss,
Remembering, remembering
That only yesterday
(It seems a world away!)
No wight dared sing
Nor any earthy thing
The tiniest touch of green and white display.
But now, the vernal kiss,
And lo, the spring, the spring!

Divine foreteller of eternal summer,
Hail and farewell!
Before thy time, thou art a comer
Bearing a promise and a pledge: --
That when the frost returns and May shall seem
The semblance of a dream,
Our faith may yet be firm; and on the edge
Of rigorous winter we may know thee near,
Thou mystic miracle!

Even as an inland wanderer may hear,
Far from the sea voice, as he straining yearns
To catch the sound of billows, -- faint but clear, --
The multitudinous murmur of the brine,
And doth divine
How ever round all lands the water-sphere,
Open and splendid, singing as she turns,
Past plumed capes of pine,
Beside bland meadows or by dreary sands,
Or skirting cliffs sun-soaked and keen ashine, --
Circles all shores and lifts her moving tides
Godward, where peace abides.

May day in March, the soul shall find thee still
A foretaste and a happy prophecy
Of that far-off, that wished-for day
When beauty conquers, winter fades away
Into the perfectness of halcyon weather
And the world wonders whether
'Twas ever anything on earth but May!





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