The blue-birds and the violets.
Are with us once again, And promises of summer spot The hill-side and the plain.
The clouds along the mountain-tops
Are riding on the breeze,
Their trailing azure trains of mist
Are tangled in the trees.
The snow-drifts, which have lain so long,
Haunting the hidden nooks,
Like guilty ghosts have slipped away,
Unseen, into the brooks.
The streams are fed with generous rain,
They drink the wayside springs,
And flutter down from crag to crag,
Upon their foamy wings.
Through all the long wet nights they brawl,
By mountain-homes remote,
Till woodmen in their sleep behold
Their ample rafts afloat.
The lazy wheel that hung so dry
Above the idle stream,
Whirls wildly in the misty dark,
And through the miller's dream.
Loud torrent unto torrent calls,
Till at the mountain's feet
Flashing afar their spectral light,
The noisy waters meet.
They meet, and through the lowlands sweep,
Toward briny bay and lake,
Proclaiming to the distant towns
"The country is awake!"
Winter is past; the heart of Nature warms
Beneath the wreck of unresisted storms;
Doubtful at first, suspected more than seen,
The southern slopes are fringed with tender green;
On sheltered banks, beneath the dripping eaves,
Spring's earliest nurslings spread their glowing leaves,
Bright with the hues from wider pictures won,
White, azure, golden-drift, or sky, or sun:
The snowdrop, bearing on her radiant breast
The frozen trophy torn from winter's crest;
The violet, gazing on the arch of blue
Till her own iris wears its deepened hue;
The spendthrift crocus, bursting through the mold,
Naked and shivering, with his cup of gold.
Swelled with new life, the darkening elm on high
Prints her thick buds against the spotted sky;
On all her boughs the stately chestnut cleaves
The gummy shroud that wraps her embryo leaves;
The house-fly, stealing from his narrow grave,
Drugged with the opiate that November gave,
Beats with faint wing against the snowy pane,
Or crawls tenacious o'er its lucid plain;
From shaded chinks of lichen-crusted walls
In languid curves the gliding serpent crawls;
The bog's green harper, thawing from his sleep
Twangs a hoarse note, and tries a shortened leap.
On floating rails that face the softening noons
The still, shy turtles range their dark platoons,
Or toiling, aimless, o'er the mellowing fields,
Trail through the grass their tesselated shields.
At last young April, ever frail and fair,
Wooed by her playmate with the golden hair,
Chased to the margin of receding floods,
O'er the soft meadows starred with opening buds,
In tears and blushes sighs herself away,
And hides her cheek beneath the flowers of May.
FROM THE ITALIAN OF PETRARCH
The soft west wind, returning, brings again
Its lovely family of herbs and flowers;
Progne's gay notes, and Philomela's strain
Vary the dance of spring-tide's rosy hours;
And joyously o'er every field and plain,
Glows the bright smile that greets them from above,
And the warm spirit of reviving love
Breathes in the air and murmurs from the main.
But tears and sorrowing sighs, which gushingly
Pour from the secret chambers of my heart,
Are all that spring returning brings to me;
And in the modest smile, or glance of art,
The song of birds, the bloom of heath and tree,
A desert's rugged tract and savage forms I see.
Translation of G. W. GREENE.
FRANCESCO PETRARCA, 1304-1374.
HE morning song of Bellman, commencing, "Up, Amaryllis !" is one of the most celebrated of the lyrical poems of Sweden. We are told that nothing can exceed the enthusiasm with which it is sung in that country by high and low, old and young, alike. The translation inserted in the ensuing pages has been taken from the interesting work of the Howitts, on the "Literature of Northern Europe."
But who the melodies of morn can tell?
The wild brook babbling down the mountain side;
The lowing herd, the sheepfold's simple bell;
The pipe of early shepherd dim descried
In the lone valley; echoing far and wide
The clamorous horn along the cliffs above;
The hollow murmur of the ocean tide;
The hum of bees, the linnet's lay of love,
And the full choir that wakes the universal grove
The cottage curs at early pilgrim bark;
Crown'd with her pail the tripping milk-maid sings;
The whistling plowman stalks afield; and hark!
Down the rough slope the ponderous wagon rings;
Through rustling corn the hare, astonish'd, springs;
Slow tolls the village clock the drowsy hour-
The partridge bursts away on whirring wings;
Deep mourns the turtle in sequester'd bower,
And shrill lark carols clear from her aërial tour.
JAMES BEATTIE, 1735-1803.
The morning hath not lost her virgin blush,
Nor step, but mine, soil'd the earth's tinsel'd robe.
How full of Heaven this solitude appears-
This healthful comfort of the happy swain,
Who from his hard but peaceful bed roused up,
In morning's exercise saluted is
By a full choir of feather'd choristers,
Wedding their notes to the enamor❜d air!
There Nature, in her unaffected dress,
Plaited with valleys, and emboss'd with hills,
Enlaced with silver streams, and fring'd with woods,
Sits lovely in her native russet.
WILLIAM CHAMBERLAYNE, 1619-1689.
BEFORE SUNRISE, IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNI
Hast thou a charm to stay the morning star
In his steep course? So long he seems to pause
On thy bald, awful head, O sovran Blanc !
The Arne and Aveyron at thy base
Rove ceaselessly; but thou, most awful form!
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines
How silently! Around thee and above,
Deep in the air and dark, substantial, black-
An ebon mass: methinks thou piercest it
As with a wedge! But when I look again,
It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,
Thy habitation from eternity!
O dread and silent mount! I gazed upon thee
Till thou, still present to the bodily sense,
Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer,
I worshiped the Invisible alone.
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