| |
| WITH subtle presence the air is filling, | |
| Our pulses thrilling; | |
| What strange mysterious sense of gladness | |
| Transfused with sadness; | |
| Trembling in opal and purple hues | 5 |
| That wake and melt in azure high, | |
| Brooding in sunbeams that suffuse | |
| With the light of hope, the fields that lie | |
| Quiet and grey ’neath the sunset sky! | |
| |
| Thor’s thunder-hammer hath waked the earth | 10 |
| To a glad new birth— | |
| The birth of the fresh, young, joyous spring, | |
| New blossoming— | |
| Bidding the south wind softly blow, | |
| Loosing the tongues of the murmuring streams, | 15 |
| Sending the sap with a swifter flow | |
| Through the bare brown trees, and waking dreams | |
| Of summer shadows and golden gleams! | |
| |
| Down in the budding woods unseen, | |
| Amid mosses green, | 20 |
| The fair hepatica wakes to meet | |
| The hastening feet | |
| Of the children that soon, with laughter sweet, | |
| Shall shout with glee to find it there, | |
| And bear it homeward—the herald meet | 25 |
| Of the countless bells and blossoms fair | |
| That shall ring sweet chimes on the balmy air. | |
| |
| And tiny ferns their fronds unbind | |
| By streams that wind— | |
| Singing a song in soft undertones— | 30 |
| O’er the smooth brown stones; | |
| And pure white lilies and purple phlox | |
| And violets yellow and white and grey, | |
| And columbines gleaming from lichened rocks, | |
| And dogwood blossoms and snowy may, | 35 |
| Shall wreathe with beauty each woodland way. | |
| |
| Soon, in the shadow of dewy leaves | |
| About our eaves, | |
| The chorister-birds shall their matins ring, | |
| Sweet carolling; | 40 |
| While, through the bowery orchard trees, | |
| All sprinkled with drifts of scented snow, | |
| Comes the fragrant breath of the morning breeze, | |
| And over the long lush grass below | |
| Soft wavering shadows glide to and fro. | 45 |
| |
| But when shall the better Spring arise | |
| Beneath purer skies— | |
| The Spring that can never pass away | |
| Nor know decay— | |
| Sending new joy through the stricken heart, | 50 |
| Waking new life from the silent tomb, | |
| Joining the souls that have moved apart, | |
| Bidding earth’s winter for ever depart, | |
| With incompleteness, pain, and gloom, | |
| Till—ransomed at last from its inwrought doom— | 55 |
| It shall blossom forth in immortal bloom? | |
| |
