The air is warm as Summer’s air,
The sky has a mellow blue,
A slumberous breeze floats everywhere,
And the clouds are soft and few:
But the trees are bare as winter trees,
They cast a skeleton shade!
We think that the naked earth should freeze,
We doubt for each budding blade.
Yet sea-like murmurs, deep and low,
From the bare woods rise and fall,
You seem to feel the ebb and flow
Of the solemn Heart of All!
As a homelike birds come with hope and cheer,
More sweet than in perfect June,
The souls of men, like the growing year.
Catch the meaning of their tune.
How can ye sing your Summer lays
In bows so brown and dry?
“From the wise heart some the hymns we raise!”
They seem to make reply;
While safe from the rougher wind, and plow,
Close under the leaning wall,
White flowers, star-petalled, are rising now,
As if at the blithe bird’s call.
How many a soft bloom comes to shame
The naked forest limbs,
Whose sluggish life seems to lag the same
At Beauty’s hues and hymns!
O Woods, ye cannot long resist
The tender clasp of Spring,
Not long, by the breeze and sunshine kiss,
To your death and bareness cling!
If South-Wind, and his pleasant Rain,
And the daring little Flowers,
Bring not persuasion in their train,
Ye are no more kin of ours.
But under your rugged vest, I ween,
The new life-stir is felt,
Where mild as violets, though unseen,
Your hearts of rigor melt!
Then let no softer child of May,
In her briefer beauty drest,
Murmur against your long delay;
Ye shall flourish with the best
Heaved o’er the green, unbraking surge
Of your every wind-waved bough,
The birds shall sing the early dirge
Of blooms that mock you now;
And earth shall feel a fresher breath
From woody vale and hill,
When long time lapped in sweetest death
The Spring’s first-born are still.
Then let no heart, athirst for good,
Dare murmur at God’s delay;
The new life comes to the greening wood,
It shall come to the world, one day!
George Shepard Burleigh
