GOD guard you, and greet you well, Messengers of Spring: Nightingale and cuckoo, Turtle-dove and hoopoe, Swallow swift, and all wild birds That with a hundred varied words Rouse and make to ring Every greening glade and fell. God guard you, and greet you fain, Dainty flowerets, too: Daisies, lilies, roses, Poppies -- and the posies Sprung where ancient heroes fell, Hyacinth and asphodel-- Mint and thyme and rue: All be welcome back again! God guard you, and greet you true, Butterflies and bees, In your motley dresses Wooing the sweet grasses, Flitting free on rainbow-wing, Coaxing, kissing, cozening Flowers of all degrees, Red or yellow, white or blue. A thousand thousand times I greet Thy return again, Sweet and beauteous season; In sooth I love with reason Better far thy sunny gleams And thy gently prattling streams Than Winter's wind and rain That shut me close in my retreat. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...PASSING BY by THOMAS FORD (1580-1648) THE PESSIMIST by BENJAMIN FRANKLIN KING THE SOLITARY WOODSMAN by CHARLES GEORGE DOUGLAS ROBERTS NEAR DOVER, SEPTEMBER 1802 by WILLIAM WORDSWORTH THE TWO APRIL MORNINGS by WILLIAM WORDSWORTH OMNES EODEM COGIMUR by AMMIANUS |