Poetry Sunday: Spring in New Hampshire

Festus Claudius "Claude" McKay was a Jamaican-American poet and prose writer who was a leading figure in the Harlem Renaissance spanning the 1920s and early 1930s. He wrote this simple and evocative poem that seems to describe my week just past. The "happy winds" and "golden hours" and, at night, "the stars too gloriously bright" beckoned me outside. Who can bear to spend such days indoors?

 Spring in New Hampshire
Too green the springing April grass,
Too blue the silver-speckled sky,
For me to linger here, alas,
While happy winds go laughing by,
Wasting the golden hours indoors,
Washing windows and scrubbing floors.

Too wonderful the April night,
Too faintly sweet the first May flowers,
The stars too gloriously bright,
For me to spend the evening hours,
When fields are fresh and streams are leaping,
Wearied, exhausted, dully sleeping. 
Claude McKay

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