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| ONCE more, through God’s high will and grace, | |
| Of hours that each its task fulfils, | |
| Heart-healing Spring resumes its place | |
| The valley through, and scales the hills. | |
| |
| Who knows not Spring? who doubts when blows | 5 |
| Her breath, that Spring is come indeed? | |
| The swallow doubts not; nor the rose | |
| That stirs, but wakes not; nor the weed. | |
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| Once more the cuckoo’s call I hear; | |
| I know, in many a glen profound, | 10 |
| The earliest violets of the year | |
| Rise up like water from the ground. | |
| |
| The thorn, I know, once more is white; | |
| And far down many a forest dale, | |
| The anemones in dubious light | 15 |
| Are trembling like a bridal veil. | |
| |
| By streams released that surging flow | |
| From craggy shelf, through sylvan glades, | |
| The pale narcissus, well I know, | |
| Smiles hour by hour on greener shades. | 20 |
| |
| The honey’d cowslip tufts once more | |
| The golden slopes;—with gradual ray | |
| The primrose stars the rock, and o’er | |
| The wood-path strews its milky way. | |
| |
| I see her not—I feel her near, | 25 |
| As charioted in mildest airs | |
| She sails through yon empyreal sphere, | |
| And in her arms and bosom bears | |
| |
| That urn of flowers, and lustral dews, | |
| Whose sacred balm, on all things shed, | 30 |
| Revives the weak, the old renews, | |
| And crowns with votive wreaths the dead. | |
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