V

Washed of the early rains, And rosed with ruddy stains, The boughs and branches now make ready for Their raiment green of leaves and musk and myrrh.-- As if to greet her pomp, The heralds of her state, As ’t were with many a silvery trump, The birds are singing, singing, And all the world’s elate, As o’er the hills, as ’twere from Heaven’s gate, With garments, dewy-clinging, Comes Spring, around whose way the budded woods are ringing With redbird and with bluebird and with thrush; While, overhead, on happy wings is swinging The swallow through the heaven’s azure hush: And wren and sparrow, vireo and crow Are busy with their nests, or high or low, In every tree, it seems, and every bush. The loamy odor of the turfy heat, Breathed warm from every field and wood-retreat, Is as if spirits passed on flowery feet:-- That indescribable Aroma of the woods one knows so well, Reminding one of sylvan presences, Clad on with lichen and with moss, That haunt and trail across The woods’ dim dales and dells; their airy essences Of racy nard and musk Rapping at gummy husk And honeyed sheath of every leaf and flower That open to their knock, each at the appointed hour:-- And, lo! Where’er they go, Behold a miracle Too beautiful to tell!-- Where late the woods were bare The red-bud shakes its hair Of flowering flame; the dogwood and the haw Voluble with bees dazzle with pearl the shaw; And the broad maple crimsons, sunset-red, Through firmaments of forest overhead: And of its boughs the wild-crab makes a lair, A rosy cloud of blossoms, for the bees, Bewildered there, To traffic in; lulling itself with these. And in the whispering woods The wild-flower multitudes Rise, star, and bell, and bugle, all amort To everything save their own loveliness And the soft wind’s caress,-- The wind that tip-toes through them:--liverwort, Spring-beauty, windflower and the bleeding-heart, And bloodroot, holding low Its cups of stainless snow; Sorrel and trillium and the twin-leaf, too, Twinkling, like stars, through dew: And patches, as it were, of saffron skies, Ranunculus; and golden eyes Of adder’s-tongue; and mines, It seems, of grottoed gold, the poppy-celandines; And, sapphire-spilled, Bluets and violets, Dark pansy-violets and columbines, With rainy radiance filled; And many more whose names my mind forgets, But not my heart: The Nations of the Flowers, making gay In every place and part, With pomp and pageantry Of absolute Beauty, all the worlds of woods, In congregated multitudes, Assembled where Unearthly colors all the oaks put on, Velvet and silk and vair, Vermeil and mauve and fawn, Dim and auroral as the hues of dawn.