Spring means new starts on the farm, new starts for the Town and perhaps a new start for your heart. I think this is the real New Year . Here is a portion of a much longer poem by J. Howard Flower, Four Corners, Hartland, Vt.
The Free Soul – April 1917
Spring is Coming
That’s One Good Thing Nobody Can Prevent
The Duel Natures now begin
To rime with passing sweetness
The God without, the God within
Are teeming with completeness!!
All night premonitory throes
Of change came perseverant
And this chaotic dawn o’erflows
With voices incoherent.
In lofty solitudes afar,
Where hilltop snows are thawing’
I know the fir-shut hollows are
Now full of crows and cawing
I mark thine advent, hailing Spring’
As blithest of assurance:
It comes to pass, a heavenly thing
Above mankind’s concurrence.
The social powers that bear the purse
May thwart, and mete denial
To many things,- but not reverse
The tide upon the dial!!!
Reprinted from the Hartland Historical Society Newsletter, Spring 2005