Poems (Trask)/In Spring

by Clara Augusta Jones Trask

IN SPRING.

The skies are blue as English violets,
 The breeze suggests rare tropic airs of balm;
The sun in purple splendor nightly sets,
 And evening closes with a saintly calm.

The mornings are ablaze with red and gold;
 The sunlight takes a warmer, richer hue;
Rare possibilities the white clouds hold,
 Of grateful shadow, and of cooling dew.

The brooks, let loose, bound down the rocky heights;
 No more the Frost King binds to sleep and dreams,
No more the cold gems with pale chrysolites
 The shrubs that droop above the ice-locked streams.

The buds swell into greenest wealth of leaves
 Upon the great elm just without the door;
The robin chirps within the forest-trees,
 The blue-bird whistles from the barren moor.

The frog pipes shrilly in the lonesome swamp,
 The sweet notes of the thrush break softly in;
And, like the blood-red banners of a camp,
 The scarlet maples show their blossoming.

The wild arbutus blushes in the dell,—
 The damp, cool dell, beneath the old pine-trees,—
A breath of subtlest fragrance in each cell,
 Of summer's sweetness uttering prophecies.

The day declines, dissolves into the night,
 All lush and moist with smell of growing leaves,
And over all the young moon sheds its light
 Before it sinks behind the western trees.