MAY

    I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
      Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
    But, in the embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
      Wherewith the seasonable month endows
    The grass, the thicket, and the fruit tree wild;
      White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
    Fast-fading violets covered up in leaves;
        And mid-May’s wildest child,
      The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
    The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

    —­John Keats.

    Such a starved bank of moss
      Till that May morn,
    Blue ran the flash across: 
      Violets were born.

    —­Robert Browning.

MAY FIRST

Arbor Day.

Joseph Addison born 1672.

Arthur, Duke of Wellington, born 1769.

    If you wish to succeed in life, make perseverance your bosom friend,
    experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother, and hope
    your guardian genius.

    —­Joseph Addison.

    He who plants a tree, he plants love;
    Tents of coolness spreading out above
    Wayfarers, he may not live to see. 
      Gifts that grow are best;
      Hands that bless are blest;
      Plant-life does the rest! 
    Heaven and earth help him who plants a tree,
    And his work his own reward shall be.

    —­Lucy Larcom.

    And he shall be like a tree planted by the streams of water,
    That bringeth forth its fruit in its season,
    Whose leaf also doth not wither;
    And whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.

    —­Psalm 1. 3.

My Creator, give me joyful eyes for joyful nature.  May I be alive to the gentle influences of a May day which bring new experiences to all who may receive them:  and may I serve thee by unfolding to others the love of truth, the love of good, and the love of beauty.  Amen.

MAY SECOND

Leonardo da Vinci died 1519.

Robert Hall born 1764.

Jerome K. Jerome born 1859.

William Henry Hudson born 1862.

    Without a false humility;
    For this is love’s nobility,—­
    Not to scatter bread and gold,
    Goods and raiment bought and sold;
    But to hold fast his simple sense,
    And speak the speech of innocence,
    And with hand and body and blood,
    To make his bosom-counsel good. 
    He that feeds man serveth few;
    He serves all who dares be true.

    —­Ralph Waldo Emerson.

    Small service is true service while it lasts: 
      Of humblest friends scorn not one: 
    The daisy, by the shadow it casts,
      Protects the lingering dewdrop from the sun.

    —­William Wordsworth.