Poems (Van Rensselaer)/Spring on Long Island

by Mariana Griswold Van Rensselaer

SPRING ON LONG ISLAND

Not on the wind's high wing
Comes the Spring
When she comes our way;
Not on the chariots white
Of the clouds of day
Or the pinions gray
Of the wavering mists of night;
And she comes not, over the roads of the land,
By valley and plain where the great hills stand,
By the forest path or the fallow plain.
When she knows we are waiting again
She is borne by the sea from the south;
There is salt in the breath of her mouth,
There is brine in the scent of her hair,
And everywhere
The lapping of water sings
With the bird-notes that she brings.

See how the coast-lines slip
More and more to the west
From the pine-clad breast
Of Maine unto Florida's palmy tip.
See how our isle looks forth
From its anchorage here at the north
Toward the islands of Caribbee—
Nothing between but the sea.
It is there that the Spring abides
The end of our wintertides.
It is thence she comes on the shining flood,
In a splendor of sunlight dressed,
The north in her heart, the south in her blood,
And her feet on the white wave-crest
So eagerly swift that we say she is near,
And the day beyond she is here, she is here.

Then the blue of our sky is the blue of the deep-stretched sea,
The green of our banks is the green where its shallows be,
And its foam-wreaths bloom once more
In the blossoms that spray us from shore to shore,
Orchard and thicket and forest floor—
Apple, azalea, dogwood, and all
The frail things snowy and small
That cling
To the garment-edge of the Spring.