Under the Willows [May is a pious fraud of the almanac]

1819 –

1891

May is a pious fraud of the almanac,
A ghastly parody of real Spring
Shaped out of snow and breathed with eastern wind;
Or if, o'er-confident, she trust the date,
And, with her handful of anemones,
Herself as shivery, steal into the sun,
The season need but turn his hourglass round,
And Winter suddenly, like crazy Lear,
Reels back, and brings the dead May in his arms,
Her budding breasts and wan dislustred front
With frosty streaks and drifts of his white beard
All overblown. Then, warmly walled with books,
While my wood-fire supplies the sun's defect,
Whispering old forest-sagas in its dreams,
I take my May down from the happy shelf
Where perch the world's rare song-birds in a row,
Waiting my choice to open with full breast,
And beg an alms of springtime, ne'er denied
Indoors by vernal Chaucer, whose fresh woods
Throb thick with merle and mavis all the year.

This poem is in the public domain.

To the Dandelion

    Dear common flower, that grow’st beside the way,
Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold,
          First pledge of blithesome May,
Which children pluck, and full of pride, uphold,
   High-hearted buccaneers, o’erjoyed that they
      Eldorado in the grass have found,
        Which not the rich earth’s ample round

James Russell Lowell

1843

Love

True Love is but a humble, low-born thing,
And hath its food served up in earthen ware;
It is a thing to walk with, hand in hand,
Through the every-dayness of this work-day world,
Baring its tender feet to every roughness,
Yet letting not one heart-beat go astray
From Beauty’s law of plainness and content;
A simple, fire-side thing, whose quiet smile
Can warm earth’s poorest hovel to a home;
Which, when our autumn cometh, as it must,
And life in the chill wind shivers bare and leafless,

James Russell Lowell

2016

from The Vision of Sir Launfal

And what is so rare as a day in June?
     Then, if ever, come perfect days;
Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune,
     And over it softly her warm ear lays:
Whether we look, or whether we listen,
We hear life murmur, or see it glisten;
Every clod feels a stir of might,
     An instinct within it that reaches and towers,
And, groping blindly above it for light,
     Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers;
The flush of life may well be seen
     Thrilling back over hills and valleys;
The cowslip startles in meadows green,
     The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice,
And ther

James Russell Lowell

1848

Poems

Under the Willows [May is a pious fraud of the almanac]

More by this poet

To the Dandelion

Love

from The Vision of Sir Launfal

Poems

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Under the Willows [May is a pious fraud of the almanac]

More by this poet

To the Dandelion

Love

from The Vision of Sir Launfal

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