Welcome May

The country ever has a lagging Spring,
Waiting for May to call its violets forth,
And June its roses–showers and sunshine bring,
Slowly, the deepening verdure o’er the earth;
To put their foliage out, the woods are slack,
And one by one the singing-birds come back.

Within the city’s bounds the time of flowers
Comes earlier. Let a mild and sunny day,
Such as full often, for a few bright hours,
Breathes through the sky of March the airs of May,
Shine on our roofs and chase the wintry gloom–
And lo! our borders glow with sudden bloom.
– William Cullen Bryant, Spring in Town, 1850

Prithee, smite the poet in the eye when he would sing to you praises of the month
of May. It is a month presided over by the spirits of mischief and madness. Pixies
and flibbertigibbets haunt the budding woods: Puck and his train of midgets are
busy in town and country.

In May, nature holds up at us a chiding finger, bidding us remember that we are
not gods, but overconceited members of her own great family. She reminds us
that we are brothers to the chowder-doomed clam and the donkey; lineal scions
of the pansy and the chimpanzee, and but cousins-german to the cooing doves,
the quacking ducks and the housemaids and policemen in the parks.
– O’ Henry, The Month of May

The spring is fresh and fearless
And every leaf is new,
The world is brimmed with moonlight,
The lilac brimmed with dew.

Here in the moving shadows
I catch my breath and sing —
My heart is fresh and fearless
And over-brimmed with spring.”
– Sara Teasdale, May Night, 1920

A delicate fabric of bird song
Floats in the air,
The smell of wet wild earth
Is everywhere.
Oh I must pass nothing by
Without loving it much,
The raindrop try with my lips,
The grass with my touch;
For how can I be sure
I shall see again
The world on the first of May
Shining after the rain?”
– Sara Teasdale, May Day