MAY IS A PIOUS FRAUD

by: James Russell Lowell (1819-1891)

      AY is a pious fraud of the almanac.
      A ghastly parody of real Spring
      Shaped out of snow and breathed with eastern wind;
      Or if, o'er-confident, she trust the date,
      And, with her handful of anemones,
      Herself as shivery, steal into the sun,
      The season need but turn his hour-glass round,
      And Winter suddenly, like crazy Lear,
      Reels back, and brings the dead May in his arms,
      Her budding breasts and wan dislustred front
      With frosty streaks and drifts of his white beard
      All overblown. Then, warmly walled with books,
      While my wood-fire supplies the sun's defect,
      Whispering old forest-sagas in its dreams,
      I take my May down from the happy shelf
      Where perch the world's rare song-birds in a row,
      Waiting my choice to upen with full breast,
      And beg an alms of springtime, ne'er denied
      Indoors by vernal Chaucer, whose fresh woods
      Throb thick with merle and mavis all the years.

"May is a Pious Fraud" is reprinted from Under the Willows and Other Poems. James Russell Lowell. Boston: Fields Osgood & Co., 1869.

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