Poem by Janet Hamilton

May

Blooming, brooding, balmy May,
Tell me what to sing or say
To thy praise. I muse in vain-
Sonnet, song, and rhyming strain
Babble still of meadows green,
Sprent with dewy diamonds' sheen;
Woods bedight in fresh array
Of dancing leaves and flowery spray;
Warbling birds and humming bees;
Murmuring streams and whispering breeze;
Cuckoo calling to his love;
Wailing voice of forest dove;
Lambs at play on field and lawn;
Gorgeous sunset, glorious dawn;
Loving youths and lovely maids
Wandering in the woodland glades;
Children crowned with wilding flowers
Roam through scented hawthorn bowers;
Apple blossoms rich, that speak
Of rival tints on beauty's cheek;
Singing gaily o'er the dale,
Milkmaid trips with frothing pail,
Promise fair of curds and cream
For sweet May morn, the townsman's dream.

Now, what more to sing or say
Know I not, thou charming May,
To thy praise-ideas fail-
Songs of May are trite and stale,
Charming neither heart nor ear,
Mount we to a higher sphere.

Source of all that's fair and good-
Ah! so little understood-
Oft 'with brute, unconscious gaze,'
Man thy fairest works surveys,
Wanders through the summer bowers-
Hears the music, culls the flowers-
Basks in sunshine warm and bright-
Charms his ear and feasts his sight
With each sweet and beauteous thing-
Shall he then refuse to bring
Tribute to the Name above,
The God of nature, light, and love? 

1. A Lay of the Tambour Frame
2. A Phase of the War in America, 1864
3. Duleep Singh
4. Address to Garibaldi in His Retirement at Caprera, 1868
5. To William Logan

Sara Teasdale May ("THE wind is tossing the lilacs")

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