Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, FIFTH AVENUE-SPRING AFTERNOON, by LOUIS UNTERMEYER


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

FIFTH AVENUE-SPRING AFTERNOON, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: The world's running over with color
Last Line: Rises your face!
Alternate Author Name(s): Lewis, Michael
Subject(s): Fields; Fifth Avenue, New York City; Flowers; Primroses; Spring; Pastures; Meadows; Leas


THE world's running over with color,
With whispers, strange fervors and April—
There's a smell in the air as if meadows
Were under our feet.

Spring smiles at the commonest waysides;
But she pours out her heart to the city,
As one woman might to another
Who meet after years...

Restless with color and perfume,
The streets are a riot of blossoms.
What garden could boast of such flowers—
Not Eden itself.

Primroses, pinks and gardenias,
Shame the gray town and its squalor—
Windows are flaming with jonquils;
Fires of gold!

Out of a florist's some pansies
Peer at the crowd, like the faces
Of solemnly mischievous children
Going to bed...

And women—Spring's favorite children—
Frail and phantastically fashioned,
Pass like a race of immortals,
Too radiant for earth.

The pale and the drab are transfigured,
They sing themselves into the sunshine—
Every girl is a lyric,
An urge and a lure.

And, like a challenge of trumpets,
The Spring and its impulse goes through me—
Breezes and flowers and people
Sing in my blood...

Breezes and flowers and people—
And under it all, oh belovèd,
Out of the song and the sunshine,
Rises your face!





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