All seeds of beauty to be born?

Where shall we keep the holiday,

And duly greet the entering May?

Too strait and low our cottage doors,

And all unmeet our carpet floors;

Nor spacious court, nor monarch’s hall,

Suffice to hold the festival.

Up and away! where haughty woods

Front the liberated floods:

We will climb the broad-backed hills,

Hear the uproar of their joy;

We will mark the leaps and gleams

Of the new-delivered streams,

And the murmuring rivers of sap

Mount in the pipes of the trees,

Giddy with day, to the topmost spire,

Which for a spike of tender green

Bartered its powdery cap;

And the colors of joy in the bird,

And the love in its carol heard,

Frog and lizard in holiday coats,

And turtle brave in his golden spots;

We will hear the tiny roar

Of the insects evermore,

While cheerful cries of crag and plain

Reply to the thunder of river and main

As poured the flood of the ancient sea

Spilling over mountain chains,

Bending forests as bends the sedge,

Faster flowing o’er the plains, –

A world-wide wave with a foaming edge

That rims the running silver sheet, –

So pours the deluge of the heat

Broad northward o’er the land,

Painting artless paradises,

Drugging herbs with Syrian spices,

Fanning secret fires which glow

In columbine and clover-blow,

Climbing the northern zones,

Where a thousand pallid towns

Lie like cockles by the main,

Or tented armies on a plain.

The million-handed sculptor moulds

Quaintest bud and blossom folds,

The million-handed painter pours

Opal hues and purple dye;

Azaleas flush the island floors,

And the tints of heaven reply.

Wreaths for the May! for happy Spring

To-day shall all her dowry bring,

The love of kind, the joy, the grace,

Hymen of element and race,

Knowing well to celebrate

With song and hue and star and state,

With tender light and youthful cheer,

The spousals of the new-born year.

Lo Love’s inundation poured

Over space and race abroad!

Spring is strong and virtuous,

Broad-sowing, cheerful, plenteous,

Quickening underneath the mould

Grains beyond the price of gold.

So deep and large her bounties are,

That one broad, long midsunmer day

Shall to the planet overpay

The ravage of a year of war.

Drug the cup, thou butler sweet,

And send the nectar round;

The feet that slid so long on sleet

Are glad to feel the ground.

Fill and saturate each kind

With good according to its mind,

Fill each kind and saturate

With good agreeing with its fate,

Willow and violet, maiden and man.

The bitter-sweet, the haunting air

Creepeth, bloweth everywhere;

It preys on all, all prey on it,

Blooms in beauty, thinks in wit,

Stings the strong with enterprise,

Makes travellers long for Indian skies,

And where it comes this courier fleet

Fans in all hearts expectance sweet,

As if to-morrow should redeem

The vanished rose of evening’s dream.

By houses lies a fresher green,

On men and maids a ruddier mien,