When the hounds of spring are on winter's traces,
The mother of months in meadow or plain

Fills the shadows and windy places
With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain.

For winter's rains and ruins are over,

And all the season of snows and sins;
The days dividing lover and lover,

The light that loses, the night that wins;
And time remember'd is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
And in green underwood and cover

Blossom by blossom the spring begins.

Swinburne.

THE AWAKENING OF THE TREES

First, when all the boughs, still heavy-laden, swished and rattled In the smothered, sighing forest where the sleet and snowfall battled,

Where by day the crow croaked only,

And by night the moon blinked wanly,

Even there the rumor traveled and the deep-bound root-elves tattled.

"Change evolving!" so they said.
"Riddles solving! In the dead

And dungeoned deeps of earth we are questioning ourselves.
We are answering, 'Rebirth!'

We are forming, we are swarming, we are climbing!" said the elves.

And the larch unto the maple, and the chestnut to the beech In their beck'ning, bowing language passed the secret each to each,

Passed the whispered, thrilling message

Till they thrilled again with presage

Of the wizard wonders pending and, in low, unending speech, "Bonds are breaking!" said the trees. "Something waking! Lo, a breeze

And a bird-chip of last year. . . . Is it that that shall befall, Or mere memory we hear?

We are trembling, we are wondering and waiting!" said they all.

And old Winter, who had brooded on the autumn groves

denuded,

And, with dotard kindness shining, laid his cloak for their attire,
Felt a sudden stir of fire

Run and ripple o'er the land,
(Warming life or kindling fire?)
Which he did not understand;
But it irked the age-chilled sire
In a way he could not stand.

So he rose from long reclining

And he gathered up his raiment—
All his drifted white attire-

And he stopped not for repayment,

But he fled on winds loud whining, winging Northward in his ire.

Could it be? The sun came singing down the hills with breezy weather;

All the scents of April bringing, all the birds of April winging, All the showers of April flinging-shower and shine and song together!

Could it be? Could it be?

How they babbled, tree to tree,

How they loosed their pent garrulity and rustled, tree to treeIn what lively conversation, in what wordy jubilation Did they babble, did they chatter, did they gossip, tree to tree: "We must dress us, we must dress us! We are most unkempt and frowsy,

For we cared not in the winter-in the winter dull and drowsy! But the birds, our little gallants,

On our branches twit and balance.

We must blossom forth in daintiness, no longer drab and drowsy!"

And daintily, oh daintily, from morning-time to twilight,

They prinked them in the sunlight, they blossomed in that shy

light

With blossoms white and virginal, with blossoms pink and saucy, With leafy fillets garlanded and streamers green and mossy. With violets for their slipper-bows and sunlight for adorning They blossomed forth, each one of them, to greet the April morning!

And the little sap-elves chuckled,

'Mid the bloom swayed to and fro,

""Tis a most ecstatic morning, but we knew it long ago— We knew it all-we knew it all a-many months ago!"

William Rose Benét.

APRIL WEATHER

SOON, 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;

All the radiance, the glamour,
The expectancy and poise,
Of this ancient life renewing
Its temerities and joys.

Soon the immemorial magic

Of the young Aprilian moon, And the wonder of thy friendship

In the twilight-soon, ah, soon!

Bliss Carman.