" Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers*" 



WALT WHITMAN. 



APRIL 



Sing, April's poet, lark, thou gladsome bird ! 



Mount high with sweetest praise on trembling wing ; 

 Through dewy sunbeams thy Spring-song is heard, 



Sing ! 



Thy canticle of praise, thy hymn to Spring, 



Falls light to earth each brief staccatoed word, 

 Soft as rain-music when the white clouds fling 



A whiter rain, and all life, long deferred, 



Rises in joy, the days remembering, 

 When birds from bright of dawn till twilight blurred, 



Sing! 



the grey of the orchard a white has suddenly 

 appeared, as if by magic, and upon the topmost 

 branches from afar is seen a faint suggestion of green. On 

 this fair April morning, with a shower passed, the orchard 

 lies, as one awakened from youthful slumber, in a bed of blue 

 breath of the sky behind, awakened with an exquisite matinata 

 from the birds. In the orchard-grass the daffodils are lamp- 

 ing yellower blooms, having reached a brighter hue than they 

 owned in the bleak March weather, when they shone out as 

 beacons to light the cold dark days to a month of brighter 

 hours. 



What is that lying upon the lawn's emerald snow, or 

 fallen wild-dove's feathers? Neither; it is the scattered 

 blossoms of the white crocus. And how much more beautiful 

 they appear when coming up suddenly and promiscuously; 



