The passage must be compared
with the opening lines of _Under the Willows_ (which he at first named
_A June Idyll_):
"June is the pearl of our New England year.
Still a surprisal, though expected long,
Her coming startles. Long she lies in wait,
Makes many a feint, peeps forth, draws coyly back,
Then, from some southern ambush in the sky,
With one great gush of blossom storms the world," etc.
And in _Sunthin' in the Pastoral Line_ the coming of spring is
delightfully pictured:
"Our Spring gets everything in tune
An' gives one leap from April into June," etc.
In a letter written in June, 1867, Lowell says: "There never _is_ such
a season, and that shows what a poet God is. He says the same thing
over to us so often and always new. Here I've been reading the same
poem for near half a century, and never had a notion what the
buttercup in the third stanza meant before."
It is worth noting that Lowell's happy June corresponds to May in the
English poets, as in Wordsworth's _Ode_:
"With the heart of May
Doth every beast keep holiday.
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