ARBOR DA Y MANUAL. 
241 
UNDER THE WILLOWS. 
M AY is a pious fraud of the almanac, 
A ghastly parody of real spring 
Shaped out of snow and breathed with eastern wind; 
Or if, o’er-confident, she trust the date, 
And, with her handful of anemones, 
Herself as shivery, steal into the sun, 
The season need but turn his hour-glass round, 
And winter suddenly, like crazy Lear, 
Reels back, and brings the dead May in his arms, 
Her budding breasts and wan dislustred front 
With frosty streaks and drifts of his white beard 
All overblown. Then warmly walled with books, 
While my wood fire supplies the sun’s defect, 
Whispering old forest-sagas in its dreams, 
I take my May down from the happy shelf 
Where perch the world’s rare song-birds in a row, 
Waiting my choice to open with full breast, 
And beg an alms of spring-time, ne’er denied 
Indoors by vernal Chaucer, whose fresh woods 
Throb thick with merle and mavis all the year. 
July breathes hot, sallows the crispy fields, 
Curls up the wan leaves of the lilac-hedge, 
And every eve cheats us with show of clouds 
That braze the horizon’s western rim, or hang 
Motionless, with heaped canvas drooping idly, 
Like a dim fleet by starving men besieged, 
Conjectured half, and half described afar, 
Helpless of wind, and seeming to slip back 
Adown the smooth curve of the oily sea. 
But June is full of invitations sweet, 
Forth from the chimney’s yawn and thrice-read tomes 
To leisurely delights and sauntering thoughts 
That brook no ceiling narrower than the blue. 
The cherry, drest for bridal, at my pane 
Brushes, then listens. Will he come? 
The bee, 
All dusty as a miller, takes his toll 
Of powdery gold and 1 grumbles. What a day 
To sun me and do nothing! Nay, I think 
Merely to bask and ripen is sometimes 
The student’s wiser business ; the brain 
That forages all climes to line its cells, 
16 
