Happy Spring!

Beneath the earthen mounds of fallen leaves
Reduced to loam by winter’s rain and snow
Three sisters slumber, till Spring's call relieves
Their drowsy captivity therebelow.
Brave Snowdrop with great hope emerges first,
Sweetly she bends her most elegant head
To bear the cold retreating winter’s worst
Before rousing her sisters from their bed.

Then Crocus climbs to her perilous post
To cheer and gaze upon the passers by
While humble Violet wakes, by grass engrossed,
To spread her sweetness, half-hidden and shy.

Each sister in her peculiar way
Proclaims the coming of Spring’s first bright day!

The Birth of Autumn

'Twas a misty, quiet September morn

When the still and vapour-enshrouded world

Prepared its welcome as Autumn was born,

Wrapped in robes of clouds with dewdrops empearled.

The spiders wove delicate, sticky chains

Linked bough to bough, both to highest and low

And to these garlands clung drops from the rains

While the sun-warmed mist lent an amber glow

Then, as soon as bright Summer said goodbye,

Her son began to celebrate his reign

With a fearsome storm from the cloudy sky

With strong gusting winds and hard driving rain.

And all nature rejoiced to taste the end

Of Summer's long thirst, which the rains did mend.

Snowdrops

The Snowdrop, though of cold, wet winter born,
Yet also belongs to the warm, bright spring.
E'en though she's waxed old, bedraggled and torn
Before the bright day of spring's christening.
For, while the cold, stormy weather she braves,
So sweetly enduring the wind and rain
Bright hope she brings as she cheerfully waves
Proclaiming that spring is coming again.
So may I be, who, born of earth belong
Yet to Heaven, my bright eternal home!
May I likewise spread hope to those who long
The streets of Heaven with Jesus to roam.
For Christ returns any day for His own,
To take us up to our eternal home!

A Conversation with a Robin...

"Why dost thou sing, thou cocky little bird,

Sitting serenely on thy perch aloft?

What can be so cheery that thou has heard

To make thee sing so in this bleak, bare, croft?

The wind bloweth sharply, bitingly cold,

Propelling the small, stinging drops of rain.

What is the source of joy so manifold

Which thus bubbles forth in joyous refrain?"

"Why sing so cheery? Indeed, gloomy maid,

There's reason enough e'en in this bare place!

-Just look for yourself, o'er in yonder glade.

The snowdrops are up! Spring soon shall replace

The cold, biting, wind with zephyrs so sweet

And sharp, stinging raindrops with dewdrops fleet!"