Poetry Monday: Spring

To My Sister

 It is the first mild day of March:

 Each minute sweeter than before 

The redbreast sings from the tall larch

 That stands beside our door.

 There is a blessing in the air,

 Which seems a sense of joy to yield

 To the bare trees, and mountains bare, 

And grass in the green field.

 My sister! ('tis a wish of mine)

 Now that our morning meal is done,

 Make haste, your morning task resign;

 Come forth and feel the sun.

 Edward will come with you, -- and, pray,

 Put on with speed your woodland dress;

 And bring no book: for this one day

 We 'll give to idleness. 

No joyless forms shall regulate

 Our living calendar:

 We from to-day, my Friend, will date

 The opening of the year.

 Love, now an universal birth,

 From heart to heart is stealing,

 From earth to man, from man to earth:

 --It is the hour of feeling.

 One moment now may give us more 

Than years of toiling reason:

 Our minds shall drink at every pore 

The spirit of the season. 

Some silent laws our hearts will make,

 Which they shall long obey: 

We for the year to come may take

 Our temper from to-day. 

And from the blessed power that rolls

 About, below, above,

 We 'll frame the measure of our souls:

 They shall be tuned to love. 

Then come, my Sister! come, I pray, 

With speed put on your woodland dress;

 And bring no book: for this one day

 We 'll give to idleness.

 --William Wordsworth

This poem was written in 1798, when William Wordsworth was 27 and his sister Dorothy was 26.  They are portrayed by Felicity Kendall and David Warner in the 1978 TV film Clouds of Glory, directed by Ken Russell.  This early Wordsworth poem was written in Somerset, England, in a house near woods and the sea.  I took the top photo here in Arcata in March 2019.