'Every white and tremulous apple tree'
Apr. 30th, 2007 11:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
browngirlThe weather finally deserves this sort of poem, so with this poem I close out the month. (Except for the threatened promised voice post.)
from Sonnets of a Portrait Painter
Arthur Davison Ficke
VIII
Come forth! for Spring is singing in the boughs
Of every white and tremulous apple tree.
This is the season of eternal vows;
Yet what are vows that they should solace me?
For on the winds, wild loveliness is crying;
And in all flowers, wild joy its present worth
Proclaims, as from the dying to the dying-
"Seize, clasp your hour of sun upon the earth!"
Then never dream that fire or beauty stays
More than one April moment in its flight
Toward regions where the sea drifts of all days
Sinks in a vast, desireless, lonely night.
O wind from flushing orchards! -give me breath
Of one white hour here on the marge of death!
from Sonnets of a Portrait Painter
Arthur Davison Ficke
VIII
Come forth! for Spring is singing in the boughs
Of every white and tremulous apple tree.
This is the season of eternal vows;
Yet what are vows that they should solace me?
For on the winds, wild loveliness is crying;
And in all flowers, wild joy its present worth
Proclaims, as from the dying to the dying-
"Seize, clasp your hour of sun upon the earth!"
Then never dream that fire or beauty stays
More than one April moment in its flight
Toward regions where the sea drifts of all days
Sinks in a vast, desireless, lonely night.
O wind from flushing orchards! -give me breath
Of one white hour here on the marge of death!
