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I LATEST, earliest, of the year, | |
| Primroses that still were here, | |
| Snugly nestling round the boles | |
| Of the cut down chestnut poles, | |
| When December’s tottering tread | 5 |
| Rustled ’mong the deep leaves dead, | |
| And with confident young faces | |
| Peep’d from out the shelter’d places | |
| When pale January lay | |
| In its cradle day by day, | 10 |
| Dead or living, hard to say; | |
| Now that mid-March blows and blusters, | |
| Out you steal in tufts and clusters, | |
| Making leafless lane and wood | |
| Vernal with your hardihood. | 15 |
| Other lovely things are rare, | |
| You are prodigal as fair. | |
| First you come by ones, and ones, | |
| Lastly in battalions; | |
| Skirmish along hedge and bank, | 20 |
| Turn old Winter’s wavering flank; | |
| Round his flying footsteps hover, | |
| Seize on hollow, ridge, and cover, | |
| Leave nor slope nor hill unharried, | |
| Till, his snowy trenches carried, | 25 |
| O’er his sepulchre you laugh, | |
| Winter’s joyous epitaph. | |
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II This, too, be your glory great, | |
| Primroses, you do not wait, | |
| As the other flowers do, | 30 |
| For the Spring to smile on you; | |
| But with coming are content, | |
| Asking no encouragement. | |
| Ere the hardy crocus cleaves | |
| Sunny borders ’neath the eaves; | 35 |
| Ere the thrush his song rehearse, | |
| Sweeter than all poets’ verse; | |
| Ere the early bleating lambs | |
| Cling like shadows to their dams; | |
| Ere the blackthorn breaks to white, | 40 |
| Snowy-hooded anchorite; | |
| Out from every hedge you look, | |
| You are bright by every brook, | |
| Wearing for your sole defence | |
| Fearlessness of innocence. | 45 |
| While the daffodils still waver, | |
| Ere the jonquil gets its savour; | |
| While the linnets yet but pair, | |
| You are fledged, and everywhere. | |
| Nought can daunt you, nought distress, | 50 |
| Neither cold nor sunlessness. | |
| You, when Lent sleet flies apace, | |
| Look the tempest in the face | |
| As descend the flakes more slow, | |
| From your eyelids shake the snow, | 55 |
| And, when all the clouds have flown, | |
| Meet the sun’s smile with your own. | |
| Nothing ever makes you less | |
| Gracious to ungraciousness. | |
| March may bluster up and down, | 60 |
| Pettish April sulk and frown; | |
| Closer to their skirts you cling, | |
| Coaxing Winter to be Spring. | |
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III Then, when your sweet task is done, | |
| And the wild-flowers, one by one, | 65 |
| Here, there, everywhere do blow, | |
| Primroses, you haste to go, | |
| Satisfied with what you bring, | |
| Fading morning-stars of Spring. | |
| You have brighten’d doubtful days, | 70 |
| You have sweeten’d long delays, | |
| Fooling our enchanted reason | |
| To miscalculate the season. | |
| But when doubt and fear are fled, | |
| When the kine leave wintry shed, | 75 |
| And ’mong grasses green and tall | |
| Find their fodder, make their stall; | |
| When the wintering swallow flies | |
| Homeward back from southern skies, | |
| To the dear old cottage thatch | 80 |
| Where it loves to build and hatch, | |
| That its young may understand, | |
| Nor forget, this English land; | |
| When the cuckoo, mocking rover, | |
| Laughs that April loves are over; | 85 |
| When the hawthorn, all ablow, | |
| Mimics the defeated snow; | |
| Then you give one last look round, | |
| Stir the sleepers underground, | |
| Call the campion to awake, | 90 |
| Tell the speedwell courage take, | |
| Bid the eyebright have no fear, | |
| Whisper in the bluebell’s ear | |
| Time has come for it to flood | |
| With its blue waves all the wood, | 95 |
| Mind the stitchwort of its pledge | |
| To replace you in the hedge, | |
| Bid the ladysmocks good-bye, | |
| Close your bonnie lids and die; | |
| And, without one look of blame, | 100 |
| Go as gently as you came. | |
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