The roystering West Wind flies to greet her,
  And bids her haste, with a gleeful shout: 
The quickening Saplings bend to meet her,
  And the first green Grass-blades call, “Come out!”
So, venturing forth with a dainty neatness,
  In gown of pink or in white arrayed,
She comes once more in her fresh completeness,
  A modest, fair little Pilgrim Maid.

Her fragrant petals, their beauties showing,
  Creep out to sprinkle the hill and dell,
Like showers of Stars in the shadows glowing,
  Or Snowflakes blossoming where they fell;
And the charmed Wood leaps into joyous blooming,
  As though’t were touched by a Fairy’s ring,
And the glad Earth scents, in the rare perfuming,
  The first sweet breath of the new-born Spring.

* * * * *

MAY MEMORIES

  To my office window, gray,
  Come the sunbeams in their play,
Come the dancing, glancing sunbeams, airy fairies of the May;
  Like a breath of summer-time,
  Setting Memory’s bells a-chime,
Till their jingle seems to mingle with the measure of my rhyme.

  And above the tramp of feet,
  And the clamor of the street,
I can hear the thrush’s singing, ringing high and clear and sweet,—­
  Hear the murmur of the breeze
  Through the bloom-starred apple trees,
And the ripples softly splashing and the dashing of the seas;

  See the shadow and the shine
  Where the glossy branches twine,
And the ocean’s sleepy tuning mocks the crooning in the pine;
  Hear the catbird whistle shrill
  In the bushes by the rill,
Where the violets toss and twinkle as they sprinkle vale and hill;

  Feel the tangled meadow-grass
  On my bare feet as I pass;
See the clover bending over in a dew-bespangled mass;
  See the cottage by the shore,
  With the pansy beds before,
And the old familiar places and the faces at the door.

[Illustration]

  Oh, the skies of blissful blue,
  Oh, the woodland’s verdant hue,—­
Oh, the lazy days of boyhood, when the world was fair and new! 
  Still to me your tale is told
  In the summer’s sunbeam’s gold,
And my truant fancy straying, goes a-Maying as of old.

* * * * *

BIRDS’-NESTING TIME

The spring sun flashes a rapier thrust
  Through the dingy school-house pane,
A shining scimitar, free from rust,
That cuts the cloud of the drifting dust,
  And scatters a golden rain;
And the boy at the battered desk within
  Is dreaming a dream sublime,
For study’s a wrong, and school a sin,
When the joys of woods and fields begin,
  And it’s just birds’-nesting time.

He dreams of a nook by the world unguessed,
  Where the thrush’s song is sung,
And the dainty yellowbird’s fairy nest,
Lined with the fluff from the cattail’s crest,
  ’Mid the juniper boughs is hung;
And further on, by the elder hedge,
  Where the turtles come out to sleep,
The marsh-hen builds, by the brooklet’s edge,
Her warm, wet home in the swampy sedge,
  ’Mid the shadows so dark and deep.