The Flute of Gold

Just on the verge of summer, when the air Of our warm May is redolent with bloom Of honeysuckle and flaunting peonies And the white pear tree shedding spicy balm, With the first heat there falls a waiting hush,— A faint sweet stillness, as if Nature swooned At the on-coming of her own desire, With sense of things too lovely to be borne. For the blue door of Heaven is left ajar, And all the dreamful ardor of the spring Is spent for rapture in a moment now. And where the dogwood spreads its drifts like snow Among the greenery of the forest dim, The first swamp-robin tries his flute of gold.