On this first day of spring,
I saw an ivory birch
Lifting a filmy red mantle of knotted buds
Above the rain-washed whiteness of her arms.

On this first day of spring,
I saw a robin strutting,
Thin, still, and fidgety,
Not like the puffed, complacent ball of feathers
That dawdles over the cidery Autumn loam.

On this first day of spring,
Up the stocky hills
Some springy shrub, a scarlet gash on the grayness,
Climbs, flaming, over the melting snows.

On this first day of spring,
The willows are young and golden,
Their tall tips flinging the sun’s rays back at him;
And as the sun drags over the tree tops,
The willows glow, the scarlet bushes burn,
The high hill birches shine like purple plumes,
A royal headdress for the brow of Spring.

It is the doubtful, unquiet end of Winter,
And Spring is pulsing out of the wakening soil.