Where are the Songs of Spring?

Where are the songs of Spring; aye, where are they?

The notes that tune the dawn with jubilee

As shrouds of frigid respite melt away

And hope, a shrine renewed startles the lea

While we of dreams and duty part our lips

To drink the sun-warm nectar from a glass

Spilling its passion where the apple-blossom drips

Its fervor to the fresh, innocent grass

But now its naked arm is cold and stark

As day is swallowed early by the dark

Where are the songs of spring; aye where are they?

Muffled it seems by autumn’s drifting dirge

Or buried where the silent willows sway

As winter fills the air with silver splurge

The maestro of spring’s triumphant choir

Is resting now, a bittersweet repose

As we who seek the broken woodland spire

To warm our frozen fingertips and toes

Where choristers arrayed in virgin-white

Stand petrified against the onyx night

Where are the songs of spring; aye, where are they?

Where is that honey-trickle from a spoon

Where sunshine pools on moments now dull gray;

Sweet, golden luster on the afternoon?

Where are the songs of spring; the waking bloom?

The melody of bird and buxom breeze

To fill the earth, a gaunt and ghostly tomb

Of quiet homage to its memories

Ah yes, we know they wait, a calliope

Of splendor sealed as yet on heaven’s slope

© Janet Martin

Poetics Aside asks us to take a question asked by a favorite old poet and answer it in our own words. This question is a in a favorite poem of mine by John Keats entitled Ode to Autumn.

Ode to Autumn by J. Keats

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease;
For Summer has o'erbrimm'd their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twinèd flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barrèd clouds bloom the soft-dying day
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river-sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.