Lines in Late March

From Lyric and Dramatic Poems.Macmillan Company, 1926.

I whistle; why not?
Have I not seen the first strips of green winding up the sloughs?
Have I not heard the meadow-lark?
I have looked into soft blue skies and have been uplifted!

Where are the doubts and the dark ideas I entertained?
What have I caught from the maple-buds that changes me?
Or was it the meadow-lark— or the blue sky— or the strips of green,
The green that winds up the sloughs?

I sought the dark and found much of it.
Is there in truth much darkness?
Have the meadow-larks lied to me?
Have the green grass and blue sky testified falsely?

I want to trust the sky and the grass!
I want to believe the songs I hear from the fenceposts!
Why should a maple-bud mislead me?

Reproduced from Lyric and Dramatic Poems by John G. Neihardt by permission of the University of Nebraska Press. Copyright 1926 Macmillan Company.
Copyright renewed 1954 by John G. Neihardt.

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