To Ellen at the South

The GREEN grass is bowing,
  The morning wind is in it;
’T is a tune worth thy knowing,
  Though it change every minute.

’T is a tune of the Spring;
  Every year plays it over
To the robin on the wing,
  And to the pausing lover.

O’er ten thousand, thousand acres,
  Goes light the nimble zephyr;
The Flowers—tiny sect of Shakers—
  Worship him ever.

Hark to the winning sound!
  They summon thee, dearest,—
Saying, ‘We have dressed for thee the ground,
  Nor yet thou appearest.

‘O hasten;’ ’t is our time,
  Ere yet the red Summer
Scorch our delicate prime,
  Loved of bee,—the tawny hummer.

‘O pride of thy race!
  Sad, in sooth, it were to ours,
If our brief tribe miss thy face,
  We poor New England flowers.

‘Fairest, choose the fairest members
  Of our lithe society;
June’s glories and September’s
  Show our love and piety.

‘Thou shalt command us all,—
  April’s cowslip, summer’s clover,
To the gentian in the fall,
  Blue-eyed pet of blue-eyed lover.

‘O come, then, quickly come!
  We are budding, we are blowing;
And the wind that we perfume
  Sings a tune that ’s worth the knowing.’
To Ellen at the South

by Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1904
