Louis Untermeyer

THE WORLD’S running over with color,

With whispers, strange fervors and April—

There’s a smell in the air as if meadows

Were under our feet.

Spring smiles at the commonest waysides;

But she pours out her heart to the city,

As one woman might to another

Who meet after years …

Restless with color and perfume,

The streets are a riot of blossoms.

What garden could boast of such flowers—

Not Eden itself.

Primroses, pinks and gardenias,

Shame the grey town and its squalor—

Windows are naming with jonquils;

Fires of gold!

Out of a florist’s some pansies

Peer at the crowd, like the faces

Of solemnly mischievous children

Going to bed …

And women—Spring’s favorite children—

Frail and phantastically fashioned,

Pass like a race of immortals,

Too radiant for earth.

The pale and the drab are transfigured,

They sing themselves into the sunshine—

Every girl is a lyric,

An urge and a lure.

And, like a challenge of trumpets,

The Spring and its impulse goes through me—

Breezes and flowers and people

Sing in my blood …

Breezes and flowers and people—

And under it all, oh belovèd,

Out of the song and the sunshine,

Rises your face!