SONG IN EARLY APRIL

The gray clouds weep on the brown grass;
The sun is bright upon one little hill.
The wind is bleak, alas!—

And the song sparrow still.

A hawk screams from the gray sky,

A frog pipes one small note from the bare marsh.
I saw a sea gull like a ship sail by

And his voice was wild and harsh.

The hillsides are all streaked with little rills,
I saw a patch of ice beneath a ledge;

A snowbird on a bare twig trills,
And a robin in the hedge.

I found a pink moth and his wings were numb,
I found some green buds under the dead grass,
I tried to sing a song, but I was dumb:
The wind is bleak-alas!

Richard Hunt

WHEN SINGING APRIL CAME

When singing April came, the land awoke,
And love-of-liberty, perennial,

Pushed up its costly crimson through the sod
In every sheltered garden. April sang,
As ever, matings of unnumbered birds,
And all the shy and sweet imaginings
Of woods and fields, the beauty and the hope.
Of the live world; but piercing clear and sad
In the swift wind, and in the vibrant light,
Even in the throbbing notes of orioles,

She sang of death, and rang a challenge out;

And the red flower flamed high beneath her words:

"Oh, sorrow for the shining, wind-swept highways of the

sea!

They are made foul with blood.

Oh, sorrow for the beauty of earth,

For glowing orchards and quivering fields,
For jeweled cities humming in the sun!-
They are laid waste and desolate.

Oh, sorrow for the beauty of young souls
Hiding their vessels of fire beneath their cloaks!
The great wind has torn their mantles away,
And filled the heaven with burning,

And wrapped them in a winding-sheet of flame."

Isabel McKinney

BERKSHIRES IN APRIL

It is not spring-not yet

But at East Schaghticoke I saw an ivory birch
Lifting a filmy red mantle of knotted buds
Above the rain-washed whiteness of her arms.

It is not spring—not yet—

But by Hoosick Falls I saw a robin strutting,
Thin, still, and fidgetty;

Not like the puffed, complacent ball of feathers
That dawdles over the cidery autumn loam.

It is not spring-not yet

But up the stocky Pownal hills

Some springy shrub, a scarlet gash on the grayness,
Climbs, flaming, over the melting snows.

It is not spring-not yet

But at Williamstown the willows are young and golden,
Their tall tips flinging the sun's rays back at him;
And as the sun drags over the Berkshire crests
The willows glow, the scarlet bushes burn,
The high hill birches shine like purple plumes,
A royal head-dress for the brow of spring.
It is the doubtful, unquiet end of winter,
And spring is pulsing out of the wakening soil.

Clement Wood

Spring crept over the purple hills,
Over the yellow, sun-baked sands.
No wild music of April rills,
But her hands,

Slim and wanton and softly white,
Waved in the windy, cloudless night.

Spring danced over the cactus plains,
Vaguely tender in timid green,
Veiled in the sudden, fleeting rain's
Silver sheen.

No mad riot of buds, and yet

Wild red poppies and mignonette,

Flung from her floating garland gown,
Fluttered down.

Spring fled out of the panting South-
Drooping eyelids and burning mouth,
Blown gold hair and a robe of mist,
Desert-kissed.

Rose Henderson

BLUE SQUILLS

How many million Aprils came
Before I ever knew

How white a cherry bough could be,

A bed of squills how blue!

And many a light-foot April,

When life is done with me,

Will lift the blue flame of the flower
And the white flame of the tree.

Oh, burn me with your beauty then,
Oh, hurt me, tree and flower,
Lest in the end death try to take
Even this glistening hour.

O shaken flowers, O shimmering trees,
O sunlit white and blue,

Wound me, that I through endless sleep
May bear the scar of you!

Sara Teasdale