This work was commissioned by the Mastersingers of Cookeville for their 20th anniversary. The commission specified texts set on the subject of Spring, but I was free to select poems that I liked. For the first three songs, I found suitable texts by A. E. Housman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and George Meredith. Since my niece Rebekah Howell Bambenek was writing poetry in those days, I asked her also to contribute a poem that I could set, and after I received hers, I decided to try my own hand on a Spring poem as well, and it closes the cycle.
