In Celebration of the Vernal Equinox

Just to Be Out of Doors

Just To Be Out of Doors! So still! So green!
With unbreathed air, illimitable, clean,
With soft, sweet scent of happy growing things,
The leaves' soft flutter, sound of sudden wings,
The far faint hills, the water wide between.

Breast of the great earth-mother! Here we lean
With no conventions hard to intervene,
Content, with the contentment nature brings,
Just to be out of doors.

And under all the feeling half foreseen
Of what this lovely world will come to mean
To all of us when the uncounted strings
Are keyed aright, and one clear music rings
In all our hearts. Joy universal, keen,
Just to be out of doors.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman