Page:Poems, Household Edition, Emerson, 1904.djvu/199

 MAY-DAY

of Heaven and Earth, coy Spring,

With sudden passion languishing,

Teaching barren moors to smile,

Painting pictures mile on mile,

Holds a cup with cowslip-wreaths,

Whence a smokeless incense breathes.

The air is full of whistlings bland;

What was that I heard

Out of the hazy land?

Harp of the wind, or song of bird,

Or vagrant booming of the air,

Voice of a meteor lost in day?

Such tidings of the starry sphere

Can this elastic air convey.

Or haply 't was the cannonade

Of the pent and darkened lake,

Cooled by the pendent mountain's shade,

Whose deeps, till beams of noonday break,

Afflicted moan, and latest hold

Even into May the iceberg cold.

Was it a squirrel's pettish bark,

Or clarionet of jay? or hark