Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE BIRTHDAY OF SPRING, by HORACE SMITH


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE BIRTHDAY OF SPRING, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Cry holiday! Holiday! Let us be gay
Last Line: If my joy be suppressed, I shall burst into tears.
Alternate Author Name(s): Smith, Horatio
Subject(s): Birthdays; Earth; Echo (mythology); Nature; Spring; Tears; World


CRY Holiday! Holiday! let us be gay,
And share in the rapture of heaven and earth;
For see! what a sunshiny joy they display,
To welcome the Spring on the day of her birth;
While the elements, gladly outpouring their voice,
Nature's Paean proclaim, and in chorus rejoice!

Loud carols each rill as it leaps in its bed;
The wind brings us music and balm from the south,
And Earth in delight calls on Echo to spread
The tidings of joy with her many-tongued mouth;
O'er sea, and o'er shore, over mountain and plain,
Far, far does she trumpet the jubilee strain.

Hark! hark to the cuckoo! its magical call
Awakens the flowerets that slept in the dells;
The snow-drop, the primrose, the hyacinth, all
Attune at this summons their silvery bells.
Hush! ting-a-ring-ting! don't you hear how they sing!
They are pealing a fairy-like welcome to Spring.

The love-thrilling hedge-birds are wild with delight;
Like arrows loud whistling the swallows flit by;
The rapturous lark, as he soars out of sight,
Sends us sun-lighted melody down from the sky.
In the air that they quaff, all the feathery throng
Taste the spirit of Spring that out-bursts in a song.

To me do the same vernal whisperings breathe
In all that I scent, that I hear, that I meet,
Without and within me, above and beneath,
Every sense is imbued with a prophecy sweet,
Of the pomp and the pleasantness Earth shall assume
When adorned, like a bride, in her flowery bloom.

In this transport of nature each feeling takes part;
I am thrilling with gratitude, reverence, joy;
A new spring of youth seems to gush from my heart,
And the man's metamorphosed again to a boy,
Oh! let me run wild, as in earlier years;
If my joy be suppressed, I shall burst into tears.





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