And drowned in yonder living blue
The lark becomes a sightless song.

"Now dance the lights on lawn and lea,
The flocks are whiter down the vale,
And milkier every milky sail
On winding stream or distant sea;

"Where now the sea-mew pipes, or dives
In yonder greening gleam, and fly
The happy birds, that change their sky
To build and brood; that live their lives

"From land to land; and in my breast
Spring wakens too; and my regret
Becomes an April violet,
And buds and blossoms like the rest."

In the same poem the poet asks:--

"Can trouble live with April days?"

Yet they are not all jubilant chords that this season awakens.
Occasionally there is an undertone of vague longing and sadness, akin
to that which one experiences in autumn. Hope for a moment assumes the
attitude of memory and stands with reverted look. The haze, that in
spring as well as in fall sometimes descends and envelops all things,
has in it in some way the sentiment of music, of melody, and awakens
pensive thoughts. Elizabeth Akers, in her "April," has recognized and
fully expressed this feeling. I give the first and last stanzas:--

"The strange, sweet days are here again,
The happy-mournful days;
The songs which trembled on our lips
Are half complaint, half praise.

"Swing, robin, on the budded sprays,
And sing your blithest tune;--
Help us across these homesick days
Into the joy of June!"

This poet has also given a touch of spring in her "March," which,
however, should be written "April" in the New England climate:--

"The brown buds thicken on the trees,
Unbound, the free streams sing,
As March leads forth across the leas
The wild and windy spring.

"Where in the fields the melted snow
Leaves hollows warm and wet,
Ere many days will sweetly blow
The first blue violet."

But on the whole the poets have not been eminently successful in
depicting spring. The humid season, with its tender, melting blue sky,
its fresh, earthy smells, its new furrow, its few simple signs and
awakenings here and there, and its strange feeling of unrest,--how
difficult to put its charms into words! None of the so-called pastoral
poets have succeeded in doing it. That is the bes