" In this shrill hush of quietude * . * 

 From hazels of the garden came 

 A prelude of the passion<harm/' 



GEORGE MEREDITH. 



APRIL 



Love's morn is here, and April's vernal days 



Grow day by day more golden, skies more clear ; 

 For flowers, the year has laid aside her bays, 

 Love's morn is here ! 



Within my heart fair visions now appear ; 



The glad light melts earth's bare and silent ways, 

 Bids her for garments songs and blossoms wear. 



To Heav'n the lark ascends with voice of praise ; 



Turned into joyfulness each wintry tear 

 Of rippling stream that trills a thousand lays. 

 Love's morn is here ! 



TT7E may behold the flowery footsteps of Spring to-day in 

 ^ * the garden ; the heart of the golden air seems beating 

 with ecstasy ; the birds seem to say, o'er and o'er, that on earth 

 is " Life again ! Leaf again ! " Browning, in his " Home- 

 thoughts from Abroad," never tuned his lyre to sweeter words 

 than when he sang : 



" Oh ! to be in England, 

 Now that April's there : 

 And whoever wakes in England, 

 Sees some morning, unaware, 

 That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf 

 Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf ; 

 While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough, 

 In England now ! 



And after April, when May follows, 

 And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows ! 

 Hark ! where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge 

 Leans to the field and scatters on the clover 

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