In all pure poetic work there must especially come in the power to suck in the air of spring, to put it into song, to breathe it forth again—the palpable influence of spring, the new entrance to life.

In the soft rose and pale gold of the declining light, I heard the first hum and preparation of awakening spring—very faint,
Whether in the earth or roots, or starting of insects, I know not—but it was audible,
Then the first chirping, almost singing, of a bird, and the grass not without proofs of coming fulness—
Palpable spring indeed, or the indications of it.

Now I feel to choose the common soil for theme—naught else,
The brown soil here, just between winter-close and opening spring and vegetation,
A few white patches of snow left,
The dead leaves, the incipient grass,
Already in shelter’d spots some little flowers.

Simple and fresh and fair from winter’s close emerging,
As if no artifice of fashion, business, politics, had ever been,
Forth from its sunny nook of shelter’d grass,
Innocent, golden, calm as the dawn,
The spring’s first dandelion shows its trustful face.

Spring-time is here!
And what is this in it and from it?
The grass of spring covers the prairies,
With the fresh sweet herbage under foot,
And the pale green leaves of the trees prolific,
The arbutus under foot, the willow’s yellow-green, the blossoming plum and cherry.

Here, lilac, with a branch of pine,
Here, some pinks and laurel leaves, and a handful of sage,
Frost-mellow’d berries and Third-month twigs—
These I singing in spring collect for lovers,
(Collecting I traverse the garden the world,)
Offer’d fresh to young persons wandering out in the fields when the winter breaks up.

The melted snow of March, the willow sending forth its yellow-green sprouts,
The new-born of animals appear,
The Third-month lambs and the sow’s pink-faint litter,
The mare’s foal and the cow’s calf—
Such the scenes the annual play brings on.

Put in April and May, the field-sprouts of Fourth-month and Fifth-month,
Growing spring and farms and homes.
The ploughing and planting in spring,
The dark fat earth in long slanting stripes upturn’d,
The tough fallow and the plow-team, and the stout boy whistling to his horses for encouragement,
The whole family in the field, even the little girls and boys dropping seed in the hill,
Something swelling in humanity now, like the sap of the earth in spring.

Apple-tree blossoms in forward April,
The farmers’ fires in patches, burning the dry brush, turf, debris,
The gray smoke crawls along, flat to the ground, slanting, slowly rising, lucid and bright,
Its acrid smell welcomer than French perfume;
The Fourth-month eve at sundown,
One of the calm, pleasantly cool, exquisitely clear and cloudless, early spring nights.

O the sweetness of the Fifth-month morning upon the water,
As I row just before sunrise toward the buoys,
Hylas croaking in the ponds, the elastic air.

May-month—month of swarming, singing, mating birds (and then my own birth-month). Plenty of the birds hang around all or most of the season—now their love-time, and era of nest-building.
Almost every bird I notice has a special time in the year—sometimes limited to a few days—when it sings its best. There are peculiarly characteristic spring songs—the meadowlark’s, so sweet, so alert and remonstrating (as if he said, “don’t you see?” or, “can’t you understand?”)—the cheery, mellow, human tones of the robin— the sparrow with its simple notes—the amorous whistle of the high-hole, flashing his golden wings—the russet-backs, roulading in ways I never heard surpass’d.

Fifth-month flowers experienced,
All the young growth and green maturity of May,
Month of the flowering lilac, out of May’s shows selected—
In the dooryard stands the aspiring lilac-bush, tall-growing,
With dark green heart-shaped leaves,
With profuse purple or white flowers,
With many a pointed blossom rising delicate.
The lilac with mastering odor holds me,
The bush I love, with the perfume strong I love.

A warble for joy of lilac-time, to sing with the birds,
The long-pent spirit rous’d to reminiscence:
When the lilac-scent was in the air and Fifth-month grass was growing,
Over the breast of the spring, the land, amid cities,
Amid lanes and through old woods, where lately the violets peep’d from the ground,
Night and day journeys a coffin—
The steam-whistle, the solid roll of the train,
Carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in the grave.

And from this bush in the dooryard,
With delicate-color’d blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
A sprig with its flower I break,
Copious I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes.
Here, coffin that slowly passes,
I give you my sprig of lilac—
Nor for you, for one alone,
Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring.

I leave thee lilac with heart-shaped leaves,
I leave thee there in the door-yard, blooming, returning with spring—
When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d,
I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring,
Ever-returning spring, sure to me you bring,
Lilac blooming perennial and thought of him I love.

Give me of you O spring,
I with the spring waters laughing and skipping and running,
Again old heart so gay, again to you, your sense, the full flush spring returning,
Again the freshness and the odors;
Every spring will I now strike up additional songs,
Nor ever again forget, these tender days, the chants of death as well as life.

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