Poem by Frederick Goddard Tuckerman

April

The first of April! yet November's haze
Hangs on the wood, and blurs the hill's blue tip:
The light of noon rests wanly on the strip
Of sandy road, recalling leaf-laid ways,
Shades stilled in death, and tender twillight days
Ere Winter lifts the wind-trump to his lip.
No moss is shyly seen a tuft to raise,
Nor under grass a gold-eyed flower to dip;
Nor sound is breathed, but haply the south west
Faint rippling in the brushes of the pine,
Or of the shrunken leaf dry-fluttering.
Compact the village lies, a whitened line
Gathered in smoke. What holds this brooding rest?
Is it dead Autumn, or the dreaming Spring?

1. First Series. 7. Dank fens of cedar, hemlock branches gray
2. First Series. 26. For Nature daily through her grand design
3. First Series. 27. So to the mind long brooding but on it
4. First Series. 8. As when down some broad river dropping, we
5. First Series. 6. Not sometimes, but to him that heeds the whole

Sara Teasdale April ("THE roofs are shining from the rain")

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