SPRING POEMS 111 
“Tt is the first mild day of March, 
Each minute sweeter than before; 
The redbreast sings from the tall larch 
That stands beside the door. 
“There is a blessing in the air, 
Which seems a sense of joy to yield 
To the bare trees, and mountains bare, 
And grass in the green field. 
“Love, now a universal birth, 
From heart to heart is stealing, 
From earth to man, from man to earth; 
It is the hour of feeling. 
“One moment now may give us more 
Than years of toiling reason: 
Our minds shall drink at every pore 
The spirit of the season.” 
It is the simplicity of such lines, like the naked 
branches of the trees or the unclothed fields, and 
the spring-like depth of feeling and suggestion they 
hold, that make them so appropriate to this season. 
At this season I often find myself repeating these 
lines of his also: — 
My heart leaps up, when I behold 
A rainbow in the sky; 
So was it, when my life began; 
So is it, now I am a man; 
So be it, when I shall grow old, 
Or let me die!”? 
Though there are so few good poems especially 
commemorative of the spring, there have no doubt 
been spring poets — poets with such newness and 
fullness of life, and such quickening power, that the 
world is re-created, as it were, beneath their touch. 
Of course this is in a measure so with all real poets, 
