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Home  »  The Book of New York Verse  »  Louis Untermeyer

Hamilton Fish Armstrong, ed. The Book of New York Verse. 1917.

Fifth Avenue—Spring Afternoon

Louis Untermeyer

THE WORLD’S running over with color,

With whispers, strange fervors and April—

There’s a smell in the air as if meadows

Were under our feet.

Spring smiles at the commonest waysides;

But she pours out her heart to the city,

As one woman might to another

Who meet after years …

Restless with color and perfume,

The streets are a riot of blossoms.

What garden could boast of such flowers—

Not Eden itself.

Primroses, pinks and gardenias,

Shame the grey town and its squalor—

Windows are naming with jonquils;

Fires of gold!

Out of a florist’s some pansies

Peer at the crowd, like the faces

Of solemnly mischievous children

Going to bed …

And women—Spring’s favorite children—

Frail and phantastically fashioned,

Pass like a race of immortals,

Too radiant for earth.

The pale and the drab are transfigured,

They sing themselves into the sunshine—

Every girl is a lyric,

An urge and a lure.

And, like a challenge of trumpets,

The Spring and its impulse goes through me—

Breezes and flowers and people

Sing in my blood …

Breezes and flowers and people—

And under it all, oh belovèd,

Out of the song and the sunshine,

Rises your face!