The Flutes of April

From The Sun, April 11, 1915. By Clinton Scollard.

Don’t you hear the flutes of April calling clear and calling cool
From the crests that front the morning, from the hidden valley pool,
Runes of rapture half forgotten, tunes wherein old passions rule?

Passions for the sweet earth beauty hidden long and hidden deep
Underneath the seal of silence in the vasts of winter sleep,
Now unleashed and now unloosened once again to pulse and leap!

Don’t you hear the flutes of April, like the ancient pipes of Pan
Summoning each slumbering kindred, summoning each drowsing clan,
Sounding a far borne reveille to the laggard heart of man!

Bidding every seed to quicken, bidding every root to climb,
Thrilling every thew and fibre as with some ecstatic rhyme,
Setting floods of sap to dancing upward in triumphant time!

Don’t you hear the flutes of April blowing under sun and star
Virginal as is the dawning, tender as dim twilights are,
With the vital breath of being prisoned in each rhythmic bar?

With their lyric divination, prescience of all things fair,
With their magic transmutation, guerdon for each soul to share,
Don’t you hear the flutes of April wafted down the April air?

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