THE CHANGING YEAR A SONG FOR THE SEASONS WHEN the merry lark doth gild With his song the summer hours, And their nests the swallows build In the roofs and tops of towers, And the golden broom-flower burns All about the waste, And the maiden May returns With a pretty haste,— Then, how merry are the times! The Spring times! the Summer times! Now, from off the ashy stone The chilly midnight cricket crieth, And all merry birds are flown, And our dream of pleasure dieth; Now the once blue, laughing sky/ And the frozen rivers sigh, Pining all away! Now, how solemn are the times! Yet, be merry; all around Is through one vast change revolving; Even Night, who lately frowned, Is in paler dawn dissolving; Earth will burst her fetters strange, And in Spring grow free; All things in the world will change, Sing then, hopeful are all times! Bryan Waller Procter [1787-1874] A Song of the Seasons 1289 A SONG OF THE SEASONS SING a song of Spring-time, Sing a song of Summer, The world is nearly still, The mill-pond has gone to sleep, And so has the mill. Shall we go a-sailing, Or shall we take a ride, Or dream the afternoon away Sing a song of Autumn, The world is going back; They glean in the corn-field, And stamp on the stack. Our boy, Charlie, Tall, strong, and light: He shoots all the day And dances all the night. Sing a song of Winter, The world stops dead; Under snowy coverlid Flowers lie abed. There's hunting for the young ones And wine for the old, And a sexton in the churchyard Digging in the cold. Cosmo Monkhouse [1840-1901] TURN O' THE YEAR THIS is the time when bit by bit This is the time the sun, of late This is the time we dock the night When song of linnet and thrush is heard- This is the time when sword-blades green, And love stirs in a heart I know. Katharine Tynan [1861 THE WAKING YEAR A LADY red upon the hill Her annual secret keeps; The tidy breezes with their brooms The neighbors do not yet suspect! Early Spring And yet how still the landscape stands, How nonchalant the wood, As if the resurrection Were nothing very odd! 1291 Emily Dickinson [1830-1886] SONG From "Pippa Passes" THE year's at the spring, The hill-side's dew-pearled; The snail's on the thorn; God's in His Heaven All's right with the world! Robert Browning [1812-1889] EARLY SPRING ONCE more the Heavenly Power Makes all things new, And domes the red-plowed hills With loving blue; The blackbirds have their wills, The throstles too. Opens a door in Heaven; From skies of glass A Jacob's ladder falls On greening grass, Young angels pass. Before them fleets the shower, And burst the buds, And flash the floods; The stars are from their hands Flung through the woods, The woods with living airs Light airs from where the deep, Is breathing in his sleep, O, follow, leaping blood, The season's lure! O heart, look down and up, Warm as the crocus cup, Past, Future glimpse and fade In sound and smell! Till at thy chuckled note, Thou twinkling bird, For now the Heavenly Power Makes all things new, The flower with dew; The blackbirds have their wills, The poets too. Alfred Tennyson [1809-1892] LINES WRITTEN IN EARLY SPRING I HEARD a thousand blended notes, While in a grove I sat reclined, In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts |