Carolina Spring Song

Against the swart magnolias' sheen Pronged maples, like a stag's new horn, Stand gouted red upon the green, In March when shaggy buds are shorn.

Then all a mist-streaked, sunny day The long sea-islands lean to hear A water harp that shallows play To lull the beaches' fluted ear.

When this same music wakes the gift Of pregnant beauty in the sod, And makes the uneasy vultures shift Like evil things afraid of God,

Then, then it is I love to drift Upon the flood-tide's lazy swirls, While from the level rice fields lift The spiritu'ls of darky girls.

I hear them singing in the fields Like voices from the long-ago; They speak to me of somber worlds And sorrows that the humble know;

Of sorrow--yet their tones release A harmony of larger hours From easy epochs long at peace Amid an irony of flowers.

So if they sometimes seem a choir That cast a chill of doubt on spring, They have still higher notes of fire Like cardinals upon the wing.

H.A.