| NOW the North wind ceases, | |
| The warm South-west awakes; | |
| Swift fly the fleeces, | |
| Thick the blossom-flakes. | |
| |
| Now hill to hill has made the stride, | 5 |
| And distance waves the without-end: | |
| Now in the breast a door flings wide; | |
| Our farthest smiles, our next is friend. | |
| And song of England's rush of flowers | |
| Is this full breeze with mellow stops, | 10 |
| That spins the lark for shine, for showers; | |
| He drinks his hurried flight, and drops. | |
| The stir in memory seem these things, | |
| Which out of moisten'd turf and clay, | |
| Astrain for light push patient rings, | 15 |
| Or leap to find the waterway. | |
| 'Tis equal to a wonder done, | |
| Whatever simple lives renew | |
| Their tricks beneath the father sun, | |
| As though they caught a broken clue: | 20 |
| So hard was earth an eyewink back; | |
| But now the common life has come, | |
| The blotting cloud a dappled pack, | |
| The grasses one vast underhum. | |
| A City clothed in snow and soot, | 25 |
| With lamps for day in ghostly rows, | |
| Breaks to the scene of hosts afoot, | |
| The river that reflective flows: | |
| And there did fog down crypts of street | |
| Play spectre upon eye and mouth:— | 30 |
| Their faces are a glass to greet | |
| This magic of the whirl for South. | |
| A burly joy each creature swells | |
| With sound of its own hungry quest; | |
| Earth has to fill her empty wells, | 35 |
| And speed the service of the nest; | |
| The phantom of the snow-wreath melt, | |
| That haunts the farmer's look abroad, | |
| Who sees what tomb a white night built, | |
| Where flocks now bleat and sprouts the clod. | 40 |
| For iron Winter held her firm; | |
| Across her sky he laid his hand; | |
| And bird he starved, he stiffen'd worm; | |
| A sightless heaven, a shaven land. | |
| Her shivering Spring feign'd fast asleep, | 45 |
| The bitten buds dared not unfold: | |
| We raced on roads and ice to keep | |
| Thought of the girl we love from cold. | |
| |
| But now the North wind ceases, | |
| The warm South-west awakes, | 50 |
| The heavens are out in fleeces, | |
| And earth's green banner shakes. | |
