IN

AFTER CIVILIZATION

N the first soft winds of spring, while snow yet lay on the ground

Forth from the city into the great woods wandering,

Into the great silent white woods where they waited in their beauty and majesty

For man their companion to come:

There, in vision, out of the wreck of cities and civilizations,

I saw a new life arise.

The winter woods stretched all around so still!

Every bough laden with snow- the faint purple waters rushing on in the hollows, with steam on the soft still air!

Far aloft the arrowy larch reached into the sky, the high air trembled with the music of the loosened brooks.

O sound of waters, jubilant, pouring, pouring O hidden song in the hollows!

Secret of the earth, swelling, sobbing to divulge itself!

Slowly, building, lifting itself up atom by atom, Gathering itself together round a new centre or rather round the world-old centre once more revealed

I saw a new life, a new society, arise.

Man I saw arising once more to dwell with Nature;

(The old, old story - the prodigal son returning, so loved,

The long estrangement, the long entanglement in vain things)—

·The child returning to its home, companion of the winter woods once more,

Companion of the stars and waters, hearing their words at first hand (more than all science ever taught),

The near contact, the dear, dear mother so close, the twilight sky and the young tree-tops against it;

The huts on the mountain-side, companionable of the sun and the winds, the lake unsullied below;

The daily bath in natural running waters, or in the parallel foam-lines of the sea, the pressure of the naked foot to the earth;

The few needs, the exhilarated radiant life.

Edward Carpenter

NOW FADES THE LAST LONG STREAK OF

SNOW

OW fades the last long streak of snow,

Now Now burgeons every maze of quick

About the flowering squares, and thick
By ashen roots the violets blow.

Now rings the woodland loud and long,
The distance takes a lovelier hue,
And drown'd in yonder living blue

The lark becomes a sightless song.

Now dance the lights on lawn and lea,
The flocks are whiter down the vale,
And milkier every milky sail

On winding stream or distant sea;

Where now the seamew pipes, or dives
In yonder greening gleam, and fly

The happy birds, that change their sky
To build and brood; that live their lives

From land to land; and in my breast
Spring wakens too; and my regret
Becomes an April violet,

And buds and blossoms like the rest.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

FROM AN OLD RITUAL

DWELLERS in the dust, arise,
My little brothers of the field,
And put the sleep out of your eyes!
Your death-doom is repealed.

Lift all your golden faces now,
You dandelions in the ground!

You quince and thorn and apple bough,
Your foreheads are unbound.

O dwellers in the frost, awake,
My little brothers of the mould!
It is the time to forth and slake

Your being as of old.

You frogs and newts and creatures small

In the pervading urge of spring,

Who taught you in the dreary fall

To guess so glad a thing?

From every swale your watery notes,

Piercing the rainy cedar lands,
Proclaim your tiny silver throats
Are loosened of their bands.

O dwellers in the desperate dark,
My brothers of the mortal birth,
Is there no whisper bids you mark
The Easter of the earth?

Let the great flood of spring's return
Float every fear away, and know

We all are fellows of the fern

And children of the snow.

Bliss Carman

APRIL WEATHER

OON, ah, soon the April weather With the sunshine at the door, And the mellow melting rain-wind Sweeping from the South once more.

Soon the rosy maples budding,
And the willows putting forth,
Misty crimson and soft yellow
In the valleys of the North.

Soon the hazy purple distance,

Where the cabined heart takes wing,

Eager for the old migration

In the magic of the spring.

Soon, ah, soon the budding windflowers Through the forest white and frail, And the odorous wild cherry

Gleaming in her ghostly veil.

Soon, about the waking uplands
The hepaticas in blue,-

Children of the first warm sunlight
In their sober Quaker hue,-

All our shining little sisters
Of the forest and the field,
Lifting up their quiet faces
With the secret half revealed.

Soon across the folding twilight
Of the round earth hushed to hear,
The first robin at his vespers
Calling far, serene and clear.

Soon the waking and the summons,
Starting sap in bole and blade,
And the bubbling marshy whisper
Seeping up through bog and glade.

Soon the frogs in silver chorus

Through the night, from marsh and swale,

Blowing in their tiny oboes

All the joy that shall not fail,—

Passing up the old earth rapture
By a thousand streams and rills,
From the red Virginian valleys
To the blue Canadian hills.

Soon, ah, soon the splendid impulse,
Nomad longing, vagrant whim,
When a man's false angels vanish
And the truth comes back to him.

Soon the majesty, the vision,

And the old unfaltering dream, Faith to follow, strength to stablish, Will to venture and to seem;