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 boys Shouting with whoop and hilloa, And hip, hip three times three. The air is full of whistlings bland; What was that I heard Out 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 sphere Can this elastic air convey. Or haply 't was the cannonade Of the pent and darkened lake, Cooled by the pendent mountain's shade, Whose deeps, till beams of noonday break.........