'T is the noon of the spring-time, yet never a bird <br />In the wind-shaken elm or the maple is heard; <br />For green meadow-grasses wide levels of snow, <br />And blowing of drifts where the crocus should blow; <br />Where wind-flower and violet, amber and white, <br />On south-sloping brooksides should smile in the light, <br />O'er the cold winter-beds of their late-waking roots <br />The frosty flake eddies, the ice-crystal shoots; <br />And, longing for light, under wind-driven heaps, <br />Round the boles of the pine-wood the ground-laurel creeps, <br />Unkissed of the sunshine, unbaptized of showers, <br />With buds scarcely swelled, which should burst into flowers <br />We wait for thy coming, sweet wind of the south! <br />For the touch of thy light wings, the kiss of thy mouth; <br />For the yearly evangel thou bearest from God, <br />Resurrection and life to the graves of the sod! <br />Up our long river-valley, for days, have not ceased <br />The wail and the shriek of the bitter northeast, <br />Raw and chill, as if winnowed through ices and snow, <br />All the way from the land of the wild Esquimau, <br />Until all our dreams of the land of the blest, <br />Like that red hunter's, turn to the sunny southwest. <br />O soul of the spring-time, its light and its breath, <br />Bring warmth to this coldness, bring life to this death; <br />Renew the great miracle; let us behold <br />The stone from the mouth of the sepulchre rolled, <br />And Nature, like Lazarus, rise, as of old! <br />Let our faith, which in darkness and coldness has lain, <br />Revive with the warmth and the brightness again, <br />And in blooming of flower and budding of tree <br />The symbols and types of our destiny see; <br />The life of the spring-time, the life of the whole, <br />And, as sun to the sleeping earth, love to the soul!<br /><br />John Greenleaf Whittier<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/april-43/
