SPRING SCENE.
Winter is past; the heart of Nature warms
Beneath the wreck of unresisted storms;
Doubtful at first, suspected more than seen,
The southern slopes are fringed with tender green;
On sheltered banks, beneath the dripping eaves,
Spring’s earliest nurslings spread their glowing leaves,
Bright with the hues from wider pictures won,
White, azure, golden—drift, or sky, or sun:
The snowdrop, bearing on her radiant breast
The frozen trophy torn from winter’s crest;
The violet, gazing on the arch of blue
Till her own iris wears its deepened hue;
The spendthrift crocus, bursting through the mold,
Naked and shivering, with his cup of gold.
Swelled with new life, the darkening elm on high
Prints her thick buds against the spotted sky;
On all her boughs the stately chestnut cleaves
The gummy shroud that wraps her embryo leaves;
The house-fly, stealing from his narrow grave,
Drugged with the opiate that November gave,
Beats with faint wing against the snowy pane,
Or crawls tenacious o’er its lucid plain;
From shaded chinks of lichen-crusted walls
In languid curves the gliding serpent crawls;
The bog’s green harper, thawing from his sleep
Twangs a hoarse note, and tries a shortened leap.
On floating rails that face the softening noons
The still, shy turtles range their dark platoons,
Or toiling, aimless, o’er the mellowing fields,
Trail through the grass their tesselated shields.
At last young April, ever frail and fair,
Wooed by her playmate with the golden hair,
Chased to the margin of receding floods,
O’er the soft meadows starred with opening buds,
In tears and blushes sighs herself away,
And hides her cheek beneath the flowers of May.
O. W. Holmes.