Edgar Albert Guest

20 August 1881 - 5 August 1959 / Birmingham / England

The Ready Artists

The green is in the meadow and the blue is in the sky,
And all of Nature's artists have their colors handy by;
With a few days bright with sunshine and a few nights free from frost
They will start to splash their colors quite regardless of the cost.
There's an artist waiting ready at each bleak and dismal spot
To paint the flashing tulip or the meek forget-me-not.

May is lurking in the distance and her lap is filled with flowers,
And the choicest of her blossoms very shortly will be ours.
There is not a lane so dreary or a field so dark with gloom
But that soon will be resplendent with its little touch of bloom.
There's an artist keen and eager to make beautiful each scene
And remove with colors gorgeous every trace of what has been.

Oh, the world is now in mourning; round about us all are spread
The ruins and the symbols of the winter that is dead.
But the bleak and barren picture very shortly now will pass,
For the halls of life are ready for their velvet rugs of grass;
And the painters now are waiting with their magic to replace
This dullness with a beauty that no mortal hand can trace.

The green is in the meadow and the blue is in the sky;
The chill of death is passing, life will shortly greet the eye.
We shall revel soon in colors only Nature's artists make
And the humblest plant that's sleeping unto beauty shall awake.
For there's not a leaf forgotten, not a twig neglected there,
And the tiniest of pansies shall the royal purple wear.
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