Ralph Waldo Emerson

May-Day and Other Pieces Ralph Waldo Emerson

Daughter of Heaven and Earth, coy Spring, With sudden passion languishing, Maketh all things softly smile, Painteth pictures mile on mile, Holds a cup with cowslip-wreaths, Whence a smokeless incense breathes. Girls are peeling the sweet willow, Poplar white, and Gilead-tree, And troops of boysShouting with whoop and hilloa, And hip, hip three times three. The air is full of whistlings bland; What was that I heardOut of the hazy land?Harp of the wind, or song of bird, Or clapping of shepherd's hands, Or vagrant booming of the air, Voice of a meteor lost in day?Such tidings of the starry sphereCan this elastic air convey. Or haply 't was the cannonadeOf the pent and darkened lake, Cooled by the pendent mountain's shade, Whose deeps, till beams of noonday b