II
The sassafras twigs had just lit up
The yellow stars of their fragrant candles,
And the dogwood brimmed each blossom-cup
With spring to its brown-tipped handles;
When down the orchard, ’mid apple blooms—
Say, ho, the hum o’ the honey-bee!—
A glimpse of Spring in the sprinkled glooms?
Or only a girl? with the warm perfumes
Blown round her breezily.
The maple, as red as the delicate flush
Of an afterglow, was airy crimson;
And the haw-tree, white in the wing-whipped hush,
Gleamed cool as a cloud that the moonlight dims on;
And under the oak, whose branches strung—
Say, heigh, the rap o’ the sapsuckér!—
Gray buds in tassels that sweetly swung,
They stood and listened a bird that sung,
As glad as the heart in her.
Yellow the bloom of the rattle-weed,
And white the bloom of the plum and cherry;
And red as a stain the red-bud’s brede,
And clover the color of sherry:
And a wren sings there in the orchard drift,—
And, ho! the dew from the web that slips!—
And a thrush sings there in the woodland rift,
Where he to his face her face doth lift,
Her face with the willing lips.
For a while they sat on the moss and grass,
Where the forest bloomed a great wild garden;—
Then the beam from the hollow—it seemed to pass,
And the ray on the hills to harden,
When she rose to go, and his joy fell flat;—
And, heigh, the wasp i’ the pawpaw bell!—
As she waved her hand—why, it seemed at that
’Twas Spring’s own self he was gazing at,
And the life of his life as well.
III
The teasel and the horsemint spread
The hillsides, as with sunset sown,
Blooming along the Standing-Stone
That ripples in its rocky bed:
There are no treasuries that hold
Gold yellower than the marigold
That crowds its mouth and head.
’T is harvest-time: a mower stands
Among the morning wheat and whets
His scythe, and for a space forgets
The labor of the ripening lands;
Then bends, and through the dewy grain
His long scythe hisses, and again
He swings it in his hands.
And she beholds him where he mows
On acres whence the water sends
Faint music of reflecting bends
And falls that interblend with flows:
She stands among the old bee-gums,—
Where all the apiary hums,—
Like some sweet bramble-rose.