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| O MILLION-SINGING comes the May | |
| And whose dumb heart but wakes and thrills? | |
| Now, as of old, the break-of-day | |
| Sings through the heart as through the hills— | |
| New spirit and new day are born— | 5 |
| Yea, in our souls great suns arise | |
| With flame more glorious than the morn | |
| Lit with sun-centred skies! | |
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| O we have watched the blossoms slip | |
| Through hills of sunniest silent green, | 10 |
| And when at morn the bluebirds drip | |
| Dew on wet logs, our eyes have seen— | |
| Yea, marked the unmowed meadow tremble | |
| Through a million blades of grass new-born— | |
| Yea, heard the birds of song assemble | 15 |
| The beauty of the morn! | |
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| But there is one thing I have seen | |
| That shall be held within the heart, | |
| When all that deepens into green | |
| Or blooms in bright blue shall depart— | 20 |
| It was a hill that blossomed rich | |
| With buds of an all-lovelier hue | |
| Than the wild spring-things that bewitch | |
| Each year our souls anew! | |
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| Lo, in the park, and up the lawn, | 25 |
| And laughing in the leafiness, | |
| And fresh with all the fragrant dawn, | |
| And dancing in gay gala dress, | |
| Our city children loosed to skies, | |
| A thousand little souls laid bare | 30 |
| To all the gales of Paradise | |
| That wandered through their hair. | |
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| O loveliness more absolute | |
| Than bird or bough or beast or bud, | |
| O pure sweet splendors that transmute | 35 |
| May’s unsoul’d marvellous full flood | |
| Into a something lit with God! | |
| O gazing where they danced and ran | |
| I knew then why earth’s blossoming sod | |
| Had given birth to man! | 40 |
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