AN April sun with April showers
Had burst the buds of lagging flowers;
From their fresh leaves the violets’ eyes
Mirrored the deep blue of the skies;
The daffodils, in clustering ranks,
Fringed with their spears the garden banks,
And with the blooms I love so well
Their paper buds began to swell,
While every bush and every tree
Burgeoned with flowers of melody;
From the quick robin with his range
Of silver notes, a warbling change,
Which he from sad to merry drew
A sparkling shower of tuneful dew,
To the brown sparrow in the wheat
A plaintive whistle clear and sweet.
Over my head the royal sky
Spread clear from cloud his canopy,
The idle noon slept far and wide
On misty hill and river side,
And far below me glittering lay
The mirror of the azure bay.

I stood beneath the maple tree;
Its crimson blooms enchanted me,
Its honey perfume haunted me,
And drew me thither unaware,
A nameless influence in the air.
Its boughs were hung with murmuring bees
Who robbed it of its sweetnesses—
Their cheerful humming, loud and strong,
Drowned with its bass the robin’s song,
And filled the April noontide air
With Labor’s universal prayer.
I paused to listen—soon I heard
A sound of neither bee nor bird,
A sullen murmur mixed with cheer
That rose and fell upon the ear
As the wind might—yet far away
Unstirred the sleeping river lay,
And even across the hillside wheat
No silvery ripples wandered fleet.
It was the murmur of the town,
No song of bird or bee could drown—
The rattling wheels along the street,
The pushing crowd with hasty feet,
The schoolboy’s call, the gossip’s story,
The lawyer’s purchased oratory,
The glib-tongued shopman with his wares,
The chattering schoolgirl with her airs,
The moaning sick man on his bed,
The coffin nailing for the dead,
The new-born infant’s lusty wail,
The bells that bade the bridal hail,
The factory’s wheels that round and round
Forever turn, and with their sound
Make the young children deaf to all
God’s voices that about them call,
Sweet sounds of bird and wind and wave;
And Life no gladder than a grave.

These myriad, mingled human voices,
These intertwined and various noises
Made up the murmur that I heard
Through the sweet hymn of bee and bird.
I said—“If all these sounds of life
With which the noontide air is rife,
These busy murmurings of the bee
Robbing the honied maple tree,
These warblings of the song-birds’ voices,
With which the blooming hedge rejoices,
These harsher mortal chords that rise
To mar Earth’s anthem to the skies,
If all these sounds fall on my ear
So little varying—yet so near—
How can I tell if God can know
A cry of human joy or woe
From the loud humming of the bee,
Or the blithe robin’s melody?”

God sitteth somewhere in his heaven—
About him sing the planets seven;
With every thought a world is made,
To grow in sun or droop in shade;
He holds Creation like a flower
In his right hand—an Æon’s hour—
It fades, it dies,—another’s bloom
Makes the air sweet with fresh perfume.
Or, did he listen on that day
To what the rolling Earth might say?
Or, did he mark, as, one by one,
The gliding hours in light were spun?
And if he heard the choral hymn
The Earth sent up to honor him,
Which note rose sweetest to his ear?
Which murmur did he gladliest hear?