The maple does not shed its leaves
In one tempestuous scarlet rain;
But softly, when the south wind grieves,
Slow-wandering over wood and plain,
One by one they waver through
The Indian summer's hazy blue,
And drop, at last, on the forest mould,
Coral and ruby and burning gold.

Edna Dean Proctor

The Autumn counterfeited Spring
With such a flush of flowers,
His fiery-tinctured garlands more
Than mocked the April bowers,
And airs as sweet as airs of June
Brought on the twilight hours.

D. Mulock Craik

Oh, the fluttering and the pattering of the green things growing!

How they talk each to each, when none of us are knowing;

In the wonderful white of the weird moonlight, Or the dim, dreary dawn when the cocks are crowing!

The buttercups across the field

Made sunshine rifts of splendor;

D. Mulock Craik

The round snowbud of the thorn in the wood

Peeped through its leafage tender,

As the rain came softly falling.

D. Mulock Craik

Heigh-ho! daisies and buttercups,

Fair yellow daffodils, stately and tall;

A sunshiny world full of laughter and leisure,
And fresh hearts unconscious of sorrow and thrall.

Heigh-ho! daisies and buttercups,

Fair yellow daffodils, stately and tall!

Jean Ingelow

When the wind wakes, how they rock in the grasses, And dance with the cuckoo-buds, slender and

small!

O columbine! open your folded wrapper,

Where two twin turtle-doves dwell.

O cuckoo-pint! toll me the purple clapper
That hangs in your clear green bell.

Jean Ingelow

Jean Ingelow

The foxglove shoots out of the green matted

heather,

Preparing her hoods of snow;

She was idle, and slept till the sunshiny weather.
O children! take long to grow.

Jean Ingelow

Autumn, in his leafless bowers, is waiting for the winter's snow.

Whittier

The tint of autumn, a mighty flower-garden, blossoming under the spell of the enchanter Frost.

Whittier

Flowers are lovely; Love is flower-like;
Friendship is a sheltering tree.

Coleridge

Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!

Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven Beneath the keen, full moon? Who bade the sun Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flowers Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet? God! Let the torrents, like a shout of nations, Answer, and let the ice-plains echo, God!

Coleridge

Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.

Coleridge

Dewdrops are the gems of morning,

But the tears of mournful eve.

Coleridge

"Tis a month before the month of May,

And the spring comes slowly up this way.

Coleridge

Come forth into the light of things; let Nature

be your teacher.

Wordsworth

The wind, a sightless laborer, whistles at his task.

Wordsworth

Knowing that Nature never did betray

The heart that loved her.

Wordsworth

And 'tis my faith that every flower

Enjoys the air it breathes.

Wordsworth

Soft is the music that would charm forever;
The flower of sweetest smell is shy and lowly.

Wordsworth

To me, the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

The lands are lit

Wordsworth

With all the autumn blaze of golden-rod,
And everywhere the purple asters nod

And bend and wave and flit.

To her bier comes the Year,

H. Hunt Jackson

Not with weeping and distress,
As mortals do;

But to guide her way to it,

All the trees have torches lit.

Lucy Larcom

When Summer gathers up her robes of glory,
And, like a dream of beauty, glides away.

Sarah Helen Whitman

Midnight is that strange hour when the veil between the frail present and the eternal future grows thin.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

The shivering column of the moonlight

Lies upon the crumbling sea.

Spring unlocks the flowers

To paint the laughing soil.

W. W. Story

Reginald Heber

Full many a gem of purest ray serene,

The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear:

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Gray

Her modest looks the cottage might adorn,
Sweet as the primrose peeps beneath the thorn.
Oliver Goldsmith

Were I, O God, in churchless lands remaining
Far from all voice of teachers or divines,
My soul would find, in flowers of thy ordaining,
Priests, sermons, shrines.

April! April! Are you here?

Oh, how fresh the wind is blowing

See, the sky is bright and clear.

Horace Smith

Oh, how green the grass is growing!
April! April! Are you here?

Dora Goodale

This world could not exist if it were not so simple. The ground has been tilled a thousand years, yet its powers remain ever the same; a little rain, a little sun, and each spring it grows green again.

Goethe

Nature knows no pause in progress and development, and attaches her curse on all inaction.

Goethe

Night wanes; the vapors round the mountains

curled

Melt into morn, and light awakes the world.

Byron

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore;

There is society where none intrudes,

By the deep sea, and music in its roar.

Byron