| Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). An American Anthology, 1787–1900. 1900. |
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| 1108. The Wistful Days |
| | | By Robert Underwood Johnson |
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| WHAT is there wanting in the Spring? | |
| The air is soft as yesteryear; | |
| The happy-nested green is here, | |
| And half the world is on the wing. | |
| The morning beckons, and like balm | 5 |
| Are westward waters blue and calm. | |
| Yet something’s wanting in the Spring. | |
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| What is it wanting in the Spring? | |
| O April, lover to us all, | |
| What is so poignant in thy thrall | 10 |
| When children’s merry voices ring? | |
| What haunts us in the cooing dove | |
| More subtle than the speech of Love, | |
| What nameless lack or loss of Spring? | |
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| Let Youth go dally with the Spring, | 15 |
| Call her the dear, the fair, the young; | |
| And all her graces ever sung | |
| Let him, once more rehearsing, sing. | |
| They know, who keep a broken tryst, | |
| Till something from the Spring be missed | 20 |
| We have not truly known the Spring. | |
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