Page 55 - Poetry-Whimsy

Beautiful Spring

“A tender veil of green adorns the willows;
The grass is springing up in sunny places;
The ice no longer holds in chains the billows;
The violets soon will show their modest faces.
Oh Spring, fair Spring, we hasten forth to greet thee,
Our frost-bound hearts throb with fresh joy to meet thee.”
Thus wrote the Poet, and he read it over
Being quite young—with modest approbation,
Gazing across a field of (last year’s) clover,
And exercising his imagination.
And being caught by several April showers,
He only murmured something of “May flowers.”

But the next morning, with a north wind blowing,
And leaden skies above, he changed his ditty.
“No!” growled he, “I will not look how it’s snowing!
Pull down the blind, if you’ve a spark of pity.
Stir up the fire, and make it kindle faster;
And will you mix me that red-pepper plaster?
“If anything could start my circulation,
‘Twould be that Pilgrim Father’s business, surely.
To think they undertook to found a nation,
And counted on its future so securely,
After they’d seen—no, it was not sublime—it
Was idiotic, settling in this climate!”

— Margaret Vandegrift (Century Magazine, 1887)

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