Carolina Spring Song by Hervey Allen — Read

Against the swart magnolias' sheen / Pronged maples, like a stag's new horn, / Stand gouted red upon the green, / In March when shaggy buds are shorn.

Then all a mist-streaked, sunny day / The long sea-islands lean to hear / A water harp that shallows play / To lull the beaches' fluted ear.

When this same music wakes the gift / Of pregnant beauty in the sod, / And makes the uneasy vultures shift / Like evil things afraid of God,

Then, then it is I love to drift / Upon the flood-tide's lazy swirls, / While from the level rice fields lift / The spiritu'ls of darky girls.

I hear them singing in the fields / Like voices from the long-ago; / They speak to me of somber worlds / And sorrows that the humble know;

Of sorrow -- yet their tones release / A harmony of larger hours / From easy epochs long at peace / Amid an irony of flowers.

So if they sometimes seem a choir / That cast a chill of doubt on spring, / They have still higher notes of fire / Like cardinals upon the wing.