THE AWAKENING YEAR.
The blue-birds and the violets
Are with us once again,
And promises of summer spot
The hill-side and the plain.
The clouds along the mountain-tops
Are riding on the breeze,
Their trailing azure trains of mist
Are tangled in the trees.
The snow-drifts, which have lain so long,
Haunting the hidden nooks,
Like guilty ghosts have slipped away,
Unseen, into the brooks.
The streams are fed with generous rain,
They drink the wayside springs,
And flutter down from crag to crag,
Upon their foamy wings.
Through all the long wet nights they brawl,
By mountain-homes remote,
Till woodmen in their sleep behold
Their ample rafts afloat.
The lazy wheel that hung so dry
Above the idle stream,
Whirls wildly in the misty dark,
And through the miller’s dream.
Loud torrent unto torrent calls,
Till at the mountain’s feet
Flashing afar their spectral light,
The noisy waters meet.
They meet, and through the lowlands sweep,
Toward briny bay and lake,
Proclaiming to the distant towns
“The country is awake!”
T. B. Reed.