Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SPRING SOWS HER SEEDS: NINETEEN EIGHTEEN, by MARY CAROLYN DAVIES


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SPRING SOWS HER SEEDS: NINETEEN EIGHTEEN, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Why are you doing it this year, spring?
Last Line: O the crop of pain that is growing!
Alternate Author Name(s): Davis, Leland, Mrs.; Pawtuxie
Subject(s): Spring


Why are you doing it this year, Spring?
Why do you do this useless thing?

Do you not know there are no men now?
Why do you put on an apple bough

Buds, and in a girl's heart, thronging
Strange emotions: -- fear, and longing,

Eager flight, and shy pursuing,
Noble thoughts for her undoing;

Wondering, accepting, straining,
Wistful seizing, and refraining;

Stern denying, answering? --
-- Why do you toil so drolly, Spring?

Why do you scheme and urge and plan
To make a girl's heart ripe for a man?

While the men are herded together where
Death is the woman with whom they pair?

Back fall my words to my listening ear.
Spring is deaf, and she cannot hear.

Spring is blind, and she cannot see.
She does not know what war may be.

Spring goes by, with her age-old sowing
Of seeds in each girl's heart, kind, unknowing.

And, too, in my heart (Spring, take heed!)
Now in my own has fallen a seed.

(Spring, give over!) I cringe, afraid.
(Though I suffer, harm no other maid!)

I hide my eyes, a budding tree
Is so terrible to see.

I stop my ears, a bird song clear
Is a dreadful thing to hear.

Seeds in each girl's heart Spring goes throwing.
O the crop of pain that is growing!





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