The Spring in  General   

(After Rilke)


Spring has returned! Everything has returned!
The earth, just like a schoolgirl, memorizes
Poems, so many poems. ... Look, she has learned
So many famous poems, she has earned so many prizes!

Teacher was strict. We delighted in the white
Of the old man's beard, bright like the snow's:
Now we may ask which names are wrong, or right
For "blue," for "apple," for "ripe." She knows, she knows!

Lucky earth, let out of school, now you must play
Hide-and-seek with all the children every day:
You must hide that we may seek you: we will! We will!

The happiest child will hold you. She knows all the things
You taught her: the word for "hope," and for "believe,"
Are still upon her tongue. She sings and sings and sings.

By Delmore Schwartz

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• A Dream Of Whitman Paraphrased, Recognized And Mad
• A Young Child And His Pregnant Mother
• Albert Einstein To Archibald Macleish
• America, America!
• Apollo Musagete, Poetry, And The Leader Of The Mus
• Archaic Bust Of Apollo
• At This Moment Of Time
• By Circumstances Fed
• Cambridge, Spring 1937
• Concerning The Synthetic Unity Of Apperception
• Far Rockaway
• Faust In Old Age
• For The One Who Would Not Take His Life In His Han
• From The Graveyard By The Sea
• From: A King Of Kings, A King Among The Kings
• In The Slight Ripple, The Mind Perceives The Heart
• Late Autumn In Venice
• Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
• News Of The Gold World Of May
• O Love, Sweet Animal
• Occasional Poems
• Out Of The Watercolored Window, When You Look
• Parlez-Vous Francais?
• Philology Recapitulates Ontology, Poetry Is Ontolo
• Phoenix Lyrics
• Poem (Faithful to your commands, o consciousness)
• Poem (In the morning, when it was raining)
• Poem (Old man in the crystal morning after snow)
• Poem (Remember midsummer: the fragrance of box)
• Poem (You, my photographer, you, most aware)
• Prothalamion
• Saint, Revolutionist
• Socrates Ghost Must Haunt Me Now
• Someone Is Harshly Coughing As Before
• Sonnet On Famous And Familiar Sonnets And Experien
• Sonnet Suggested By Homer, Chaucer, Shakespeare, E
• Sonnet: O City, City
• Sonnet: The Ghosts Of James And Peirce In Harvard
• Spiders
• The Ballad Of The Children Of The Czar
• The Ballet Of The Fifth Year
• The Beautiful American Word, Sure
• The First Night Of Fall And Falling Rain
• The Journey Of A Poem Compared To All The Sad Vari
• The Poet
• The Sin Of Hamlet
• The Spring
• Tired And Unhappy, You Think Of Houses
• To Helen
• What Curious Dresses All Men Wear
• What Is To Be Given
• Yeats Died Saturday In France