Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE SOUL OF SPRING, by HERBERT KAUFMAN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE SOUL OF SPRING, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: The winds blow, / and the snow
Last Line: To bid us rise anew and grow.
Subject(s): Spring


THE winds blow,
And the snow
Shifts and drifts.
Winter lifts
His brutal hand
And smites the land
With woe.
A winding sheet
Of sleet
Wraps the ground.
Storms pound
The naked trees.
Branches snap.
The fertile lap
Of Mother Earth
Is all a'dearth.

Then Spring breaks the ring of ice.
In a trice
Her kiss unlocks the prisoned rill,
The sunbeam answers to her will,
And warms the life-tide in the trunk,
Until with power over-drunk,
The urging, surging sap bursts free
In multi-tinted fantasy.

Along the softened turf
A surf
Of green first peeps,
Then leaps and sweeps.
The nuded plain
Is clothed with grain
And grass.

Then mass
The clouds, and like a pall
The drenching rains begin to fall,
And all the glint and tint
Are grayed.
The pastels fade.
The freshets pour.
The shore in vain
Seeks to contain
And guide the tide.

Far and wide
The rivers ride,
And then subside.
And when at last
The floods have passed,
The slopes are radiant with coats
Of vernal plush.
And music floats
Full-melodied from feathered throats.
The orchard and the grove take hope.
On every twig the young leaves grope,
And virgin blossoms gently spread
And sigh and die.
Frail chrysales—they drop to death
Still pulsing with their first sweet breath.
But where the fragile promise lay
The nascent fruit seeks for the day.

Thus, bred in travail and accouched in tears,
Spring comes undaunted through the vale of years.
When Earth seems stricken and forlorn and dread,
The glorious head
Of Hope
Lifts through the drifts
And sings
Of fairer things.

So, too, struck low, we grope
Shattered and battered
By our grief and strife
Until we grow to hate
The fate
That plots our life.
And then,
When we dread
No more
The door
That swings before the dead,
Comes Spring
To sing
The passing of our woe—
To bid us rise anew and grow.





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