Classic Poem

Lo! Summer, half waking,
Her long slumber breaking,
Smiles all the clouds away,
Then seems to sleep again:
Over her frozen bed,
Hark! the sighing winds say,
While fast the cold tears they rain,
She is dead, she is dead!

II.

Trees stand weeping,
Flowers all sleeping,
Cold mists creeping,
Drearily: —
When, to assert his reign,
Lo! over hill and plain,
Shines forth the sun again
Cheerily.
Never were hill-tops green
Bathed in so deep a blue;
Never the green leaves seen
Springing so fresh anew:
The sun at his noon,
But bland as the moon,
Sleeps on the open plain,
Sleeps on the meadows;
Back to the woods again
Glide the black shadows;
Wild flowers are peeping
In beauty forth
Fearfully;
Winter back creeping
Toward the north
Tearfully.

III.

The ploughshare is clinking,
The oxen are swinking,
And the ploughboy's rude voice,
Though he sings without art,
Makes the listener rejoice,
For 'tis spring in the heart.

IV.

The birds are all singing,
And chirping, and winging
Their way through the boughs;
The snowy flocks bleating, —
The grassy year greeting
The glad heifer lows:
And sweetly these noises all,
And soft, on the hearing fall:
Even the husky crows
Seem to grow musical.

V.

And, where in the brook
Their shadows are sleeping,
The green willows look
To see themselves weeping:
For here it is still,
But under the mill,
Although but a rill,
Like a torrent 'tis falling:
And children come forth to-day
On the green banks to play,
And hark! to the woods away!
Voices are calling.