Spring

To what purpose, April, do you return again? Beauty is not enough. Like truth, I am The worth that I cannot prove a sin.

The crawling buds, the robin’s call Insist on eager gathering in Into slow turns the lives of men. Why, out of the dark I hear the trees Pleased cooing in the sunlit field

And the heavy scent of a change: is it spring? Pencil prick the shade, I want to sing!
A child at play, I cannot spare the time, I bend to peruse My dreams scattered In tiny books of myself in prose.

• Edna St Vincent Millay