How much are you achieving O April day, By orchard looms a-weaving All apple-gay? Tie on your cherry blossom, clothe your squills Madonna-blue, and give your daffodils Their collars of pale straw, and come away, Your rain-awoken hills Shall welcome May. What is behind your weeping O April tears? Your lilac plumes are sweeping, Your silken spears Of chestnut bristle in the changing sky Whilst herded clouds foregather, ’neath the high Storm-loud arena’s thundering charioteers: And beckoned silently The swallow nears. MAY-JUNE Now is the swaddling husk of Winter shed, And waking Summer, robed in windy showers, Is heralded from silvered aspen towers And orchards in high blossom garlanded. Now sunlight, in the plumed laburnum flowers And purple lilac, trembles overhead; And bees a-drone in field and flower bed Make clamorous the trade of teeming hours. Now the sweet-pea, all honey-laden, shows Full-swollen sails, her mooring ropes of green Encircle twigs. And soon the primrose queen Lights her pale lamps of Evening ’mid the glows Of brazen flower-suns, that burn between The yawning honeysuckle and the rose. THE STROLLING SINGER Sun-bathed in Summer peace the village lay That afternoon. Along the happy street Milk-fragrant kine, and wagons high with hay Came lumbering. The fields were loud with bees And drowsy with the wind-stirred meadowsweet. From bowing trees Fell chatter, and above the garden wall Wide sunflowers beamed at spearing hollyhocks That dared the wind, and scorned the clustered stocks, And bore their laddered blooms high over all. Here amid Summer murmur and delight The strolling singer came. The people heard Stray snatches of a song--a laugh--a word, And gossiping in groups of two or three Stood all amazed. For no one came in sight, Only the wind was laden drowsily With mellow sounds that slowly growing strong At last became a song:-- “Bend down, the marsh and meadow holds Pale yellow pimpernels, And sun-begotten marigolds, Thyme, orchis, asphodels, And borage born of ocean blue, Plumed armoured thistles, fever-few, Sea-campion globed, and clinging dew In giant flower-bells. “Bend down--an ebon beetle prowls, And there a swinging bee Drinks honey from the laden cowls That clothe the foxglove tree. And giant peacock butterflies Light meadowsweet with sudden eyes, And through the tangled grasses rise Lucerne and timothy.”