Nature

Spinning in April

by Josephine Preston Peabody 1874–1922

From The Home Book of Verse, ed. Burton Egbert Stevenson (1912)

Nature

Moon in heaven's garden, among the clouds that wander,
Crescent moon so young to see, above the April ways,
Whiten, bloom not yet, not yet, within the twilight yonder;
All my spinning is not done, for all the loitering days.

Oh, my heart has two wild wings that ever would be flying!
Oh, my heart's a meadow-lark that ever would be free!
Well it is that I must spin until the light be dying;
Well it is the little wheel must turn all day for me!

All the hill-tops beckon, and beyond the western meadows
Something calls me ever, calls me ever, low and clear:
A little tree as young as I, the coming summer shadows,--
The voice of running waters that I ever thirst to hear.

Oftentime the plea of it has set my wings a-beating;
Oftentimes it coaxes, as I sit in weary-wise,
Till the wild life hastens out to wild things all entreating,
And leaves me at the spinning-wheel, with dark, unseeing eyes.

MLA

Peabody, Josephine Preston. “Spinning in April.” Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/peabody/143/.

Chicago

Peabody, Josephine Preston. “Spinning in April.” Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/peabody/143/.

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