May Is Building Her House

MAY is building her house. With apple blooms

She is roofing over the glimmering rooms;

Of the oak and the beech hath she builded its beams,

And, spinning all day at her secret looms,

With arras of leaves each wind-swayed wall

She pictureth over, and peopleth it all

With echoes and dreams,

And singing of streams.

May is building her house. Of petal and blade,

Of the roots of the oak, is the flooring made,

With a carpet of mosses and lichen and clover,

Each small miracle over and over,

And tender, traveling green things strayed.

Her windows, the morning and evening star,

And her rustling doorways, ever ajar

With the coming and going

Of fair things blowing,

The thresholds of the four winds are.

May is building her house. From the dust of things

She is making the songs and the flowers and the wings;

From October’s tossed and trodden gold

She is making the young year out of the old,

Yea: out of winter’s flying sleet

She is making all the summer sweet,

And the brown leaves spurned of November’s feet

She is changing back again to spring’s.