As transitory these
As things of April will,
Yet, trembling in the trees,
Is briefer beauty still.
For, flowering from the sky
Upon an April day,
Are silver buds that lie
Amid the buds of May.
The April emeralds now,
While thrushes fill the lane,
Are linked along the bough
With silver buds of rain.
And, straightly though to earth
The buds of silver slip,
The green buds keep the mirth
Of that companionship.
BLACKBIRD
He comes on chosen evenings,
My blackbird bountiful, and sings
Over the gardens of the town
Just at the hour the sun goes down.
His flight across the chimneys thick,
By some divine arithmetic,
Comes to his customary stack,
And couches there his plumage black,
And there he lifts his yellow bill,
Kindled against the sunset, till
These suburbs are like Dymock woods
Where music has her solitudes,
And while he mocks the winter’s wrong
Rapt on his pinnacle of song,
Figured above our garden plots
Those are celestial chimney-pots.
MAY GARDEN
A shower of green gems on my apple-tree
This first morning of May
Has fallen out of the night, to be
Herald of holiday—
Bright gems of green that, fallen there,
Seem fixed and glowing on the air.