Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, A CYCLE, by MILICENT WASHBURN SHINN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

A CYCLE, by                    
First Line: Spring-time -- is it spring-time?
Last Line: Thou my life, my best beloved, all my spring-time comes with thee.
Subject(s): Autumn; Seasons; Solitude; Spring; Fall; Loneliness


I

Spring-time—is it spring-time?
Why, as I remember spring,
Almonds bloom and blackbirds sing;
Such a shower of tinted petals drifting to the clovery floor,
Such a multitudinous rapture raining from the sycamore;
And among the orchard trees—
Acres musical with bees—
Moans a wild dove, making silence seem more silent than before.

Yes, that is the blackbird's note;
Almond petals are afloat;
But I had not heard nor seen them, for my heart was far away.
Birds and bees and fragrant orchards—ah! they cannot bring the May;
For the human presence only
That has left my ways so lonely,
Ever can bring back the spring-time to my autumn of today.

II

Autumn—is it autumn?
I remember autumn yields
Dusty roads and stubble-fields;
Weary hills, no longer rippled o'er their wind-swept slopes with grain;
Trees all gray with dust that gathers ever thicker till the rain;
And where noisy waters drove
Downward from the heights above
Only bare white channels wander stonily across the plain.

Yes, I see the hills are dry,
Stubble-fields about me lie.
What care I when in the channels of my life once more I see
Sweetest founts long sealed and sunken bursting upward glad and free?
Hills may parch or laugh in greenness,
Sky be sadness or sereneness,
Thou my life, my best beloved, all my spring-time comes with thee.





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