Is it because Spring now is come
That my heart leaps in its bed of dust?
Is it with sorrow or strange pleasure
To watch the green time’s gathering treasure?
Or is there some too sharp distaste
In all this quivering green and gold?
Something that makes bare boughs yet barer,
And the eye’s pure delight the rarer?
Not that the new found Spring is sour….
The blossom swings on the cherry branch,
From Wear to Thames I have seen this greenness
Cover the six-months-winter meanness.
And windflowers and yellow gillyflowers
Pierce the astonished earth with light:
And most-loved wallflower’s bloody petal
Shakes over that long frosty battle.
But this leaping, sinking heart
Finds question in grass, bud and blossom–
Too deeply into the earth is prying,
Too sharply hears old voices crying.
There is in blossom, bud and grass
Something that’s neither sorrow nor joy,
Something that sighs like autumn sighing,
And in each living thing is dying.
It is myself that whispers and stares
Down from the hill and in the wood,
And in the untended orchard’s shining
Sees the light through thin leaves declining.
Let me forget what I have been
What I can never be again.
Let me forget my winter’s meanness
In this fond, flushing world of greenness.
Let me forget the world that is
The changing image of my thought,
Nor see in thicket and hedge and meadow
Myself, a grave perplexed shadow;
And O, forget that gloomy shade
That breathes his cloud ‘twixt earth and light …
All, all forget but sun and blossom,
And the bird that bears heaven in his bosom.
(John Freeman)
More Poetry from John Freeman:
John Freeman Poems based on Topics: Light, Mind, Thought & Thinking, Cry, Birds, World, Death & Dying, Gold, Joy & Excitement, Spring, War & Peace- Out Of The East (John Freeman Poems)
- Beechwood (John Freeman Poems)
- The Human Music (John Freeman Poems)
- Presage To Victory (John Freeman Poems)
- The Pigeons (John Freeman Poems)
- The Undying (John Freeman Poems)
Readers Who Like This Poem Also Like:
Based on Topics: World Poems, Light Poems, Mind Poems, Death & Dying Poems, War & Peace Poems, Joy & Excitement Poems, Cry Poems, Thought & Thinking Poems, Gold Poems, Birds Poems, Spring PoemsBased on Keywords: distaste, gillyflowers, wallflower, windflowers, barer
- Of The Nature Of Things: Book II - Part 03 - Atomic Forms And Their Combinations (Lucretius Poems)
- The Celt's Paradise. Third Duan (John Banim Poems)
- Rhodon And Iris. Act III (Ralph Knevet Poems)
- An Anatomy Of The World... (John Donne Poems)
- The School Of The Heart. Lesson The Second. (Henry Alford Poems)