April The Maiden

LONGINGS to grow and be vaster,

Sap songs under the blue;

Hints of the Mighty Master

Making his dream come true.

Gaunt limbs winter-scarred, tragic,

Blind seeds under the mold.

Planning new marvels of magic

In scarlet and green and gold!

O passionate, panting, love-laden,

She is coming, she sings in the South--

The World's Bride--April the Maiden--

With the ghost of a rose for a mouth!

John G. Neihardt

Easter

ONCE more the northbound Wonder

Brings back the goose and crane,

Prophetic Sons of Thunder,

Apostles of the Rain.

In many a battling river

The broken gorges boom;

Behold, the Mighty Giver

Emerges from the tomb!

Now robins chant the story

Of how the wintry sward

Is litten with the glory

Of the Angel of the Lord.

His countenance is lightning

And still His robe is snow,

As when the dawn was brightening

Two thousand years ago.

O who can be a stranger

To what has come to pass?

The Pity of the Manger

Is mighty in the grass!

Undaunted by Decembers,

The sap is faithful yet.

The giving Earth remembers,

And only men forget.

John G. Neihardt

L'Envoi

to The Poet's Town (1912)

SEEK not for me within a tomb;

You shall not find me in the clay!

I pierce a little wall of gloom

To mingle with the Day!

I brothered with the things that pass,

Poor giddy Joy and puckered Grief;

I go to brother with the Grass

And with the sunning Leaf.

Not Death can sheathe me in a shroud;

A joy-sword whetted keen with pain,

I join the armies of the Cloud,

The Lightning and the Rain.

O subtle in the sap athrill,

Athletic in the glad uplift,

A portion of the Cosmic Will,

I pierce the planet-drift.

My God and I shall interknit

As rain and Ocean, breath and Air;

And O, the luring thought of it

Is prayer!

John G. Neihardt

The Lyric

GIVE the good gaunt horse the rein,

Sting him with the steel!

Set his nervous thews a-strain,

Let him feel the winner's pain,

Master-hand and -heel!

Fling him, hurl him at the wire

Though he sob and bleed!

Play upon him as a lyre--

Speed is music set on fire--

O, the mighty steed!

Hurl the lyric swift and true

Like a shaft of Doom!

Like the lightning's blade of blue

Letting all the heavens through,

And shuddering back to gloom!

Like the sudden river-thaw,

Like a sabred throng,

Give it fury clothed in awe--

Speed is half the lyric law--

O, the mighty song!

John G. Neihardt