Daybreak in Spring.

Daybreak in Spring.


















I love to view the Daybreak when it glows,
With roseate hues, above our Cleveland Hills;
And see how soon the horizon it fills
With its full flood of light; which freely flows
From the grand Sun, which seems to us to rise 5
From clouds where he had taken his repose.
What though the merest schoolboy haply knows
That Sunrise is deception to the eyes,
Which Science has explain’d long years ago!
Yet Daybreak is as beautiful as when 10
Earth’s movements were unknown, and tongue and pen
Of great Galileo had ne’er brought woe
To the wise thinker. Are we wider grown
If we make beauty not still more our own?

To rich and poor daybreak is free, 15
If they have eyes to see and souls to feel
Those sights of Nature, which have power to heal
Great portions of all human misery.
Daybreak awakes to life and voyancy
Not merely man, but bird and butterfly, 20
The sheep and cattle that in pasture lie,
And on the wing brings forth each busy bee;
The flowers unfold their petals to the light,
And Cleveland soon is musical with song
Of feather’d choristers, which all day prolong 25
Their melody; the streams are all bedight
In silvery sheen: and Cleveland seems to be
A district form’d for true felicity.

George Markham Tweddell

Photos by Trev Teasdel