Spring surely must be near. High overhead The kind blue heavens bend to timbers tall; And here, this morning, is the picture spread That I have learned to love the best of all. I hear flame robin call His early love-song. Winter’s might is sped; And young crowns now begin to fleck with red This great green, living wall. Picture of promise, that I count the best Of many a fair familiar bushland scene; Lifting o’er all, the far mount’s sunlit crest Looks down where silver wattles lightly screen Blue smoke, that peeps between Their tall tops, from some settler’s hidden nest— Looks down on golden wattles closely pressed To blackwood’s luscious green. Before the dovecote, mirrored in the pond, A veil diaphanous of drifting mist Makes many a nimbus for great gums beyond Whose gaunt, grey limbs a mounting sun has kissed To palest amethyst. Now, stepping very daintily, with fond, Soft cooings, fantails on the lawn respond, To Spring, the amorist. Above the pool the swallows drift and dip And circle on, to trail bright crystal showers. Blue wren and peewit dance about its lip, Pausing a while to test their choral powers. And now, a hint of flowers Peeps forth, where lupins, in close fellowship With musk and maple, risk a tender tip In quest of sunlit hours. From the deep forest, on the clean crisp air, The bushman’s axe-blows echo sharply clear; A soft cloud’s tattered fleece drifts idly where Glows azure hope. Impatient to appear, Springs now full many a spear Of marching daffodils. Shorn of cold care. The joyous bush birds vie with flutings rare. Spring surely must be near.