Songs in Many Keys Author:Oliver Wendell Holmes Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PICTIJKES FKOM OCCASIONAL POEMS. 1850-56. SPRING. Winter is past; the heart of Nature warms Beneath the wrecks of unresisted storms ; Doubtful at first,... more » suspected more than seen, The southern slopes are fringed with tender green ; On sheltered banks, beneath the dripping eaves, Spring's earliest nurslings spread their glowing leaves, Bright with the hues from wider pictures won, White, azure, golden, — drift, or sky, or sun; — The snowdrop, bearing on her patient breast The frozen trophy torn from Winter's crest; The violet, gazing on the arch of blue Till her own iris wears its deepened hue; The spendthrift crocus, bursting through the mould Naked and shivering with his cup of gold. Swelled with new life, the darkening elm on high Prints her thick buds against the spotted sky; On all her boughs the stately chestnut cleaves The gummy shroud that wraps her embryo leaves j The house-fly, stealing from his narrow grave, Drugged with the opiate that November gave, Beats with faint wing against the sunny pane, Or crawls, tenacious, o'er its lucid plain ; From shaded chinks of lichen-crusted walls, In languid curves, the gliding serpent crawls; The bog's green harper, thawing from his sleep, Twangs a hoarse note and tries a shortened leap ; On floating rails that face the softening noons The still shy turtles range their dark platoons, Or, toiling aimless o'er the mellowing fields, Trail through the grass their tessellated shields. At last young April, ever frail and fair, Wooed by her playmate with the golden hair, Chased to the margin of receding floods O'er the soft meadows starred with opening buds, In tears and blushes sighs herself away, And hides her cheek beneath the flowers of May, Then the proud tulip lights her beacon blaze, Her clustering curls the hyaci...« less