early spring

Last year, for the month of April, I posted a poem a day for National Poetry Month. I've intended all along to repeat the effort, although we'll see how it goes, because this April is going to be a different sort of crazy than last April, with potentially less internet access and definitely less access to the sixth floor of the Williston Memorial Library. This year, as well, other people on my friends list are also posting poetry, and it can get to be overkill. Or perhaps not overkill, precisely, because poetry, but still. Nevertheless, let us begin, in a mellow sort of way, with Wordsworth:

I heard a thousand blended notes
While in a grove I sate reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran;
And much it grieved my heart to think
What Man has made of Man.

Through primrose tufts, in that sweet bower,
The periwinkle trail’d its wreaths;
And ’tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.

The birds around me hopp’d and play’d,
Their thoughts I cannot measure,—
But the least motion which they made
It seem’d a thrill of pleasure.

The budding twigs spread out their fan
To catch the breezy air;
And I must think, do all I can,
That there was pleasure there.

If this belief from heaven be sent,
If such be Nature’s holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament
What Man has made of Man?

~William Wordsworth, "Lines Written In Early Spring," 1798