5.
The hunt is up in heaven; the winds go whirling,
Spent February spurning, far and nigh;
March as a conqueror comes, his cloud-hosts hurling
Across the sky.
The citadels of Heaven he cleaves in sunder;
The deep woods heave and tremble, as he goes;
And the great trees rain boughs and branches under
His swashing blows.
Was ever such a pother, such commotion?
For Winter's passage why keep such a coil?
The earth shakes like a jelly and the ocean
Is all a-boil.
Have we not had enough of Winter scurvy,
But thou must ape him with thy blustering
And seek to turn the whole world topsy-turvy
With wanton wing?
Nay, learn a lesson from the buds that cluster
Deep in the grass, the white anemones:
They bloom and take no notice of thy bluster,
Beneath the trees;
Ay, and the primroses, whose pallid faces,
Upturned to heaven, in April skies foresay
The speedy end of all thine airs and graces
And coming May.
So, in my soul, though Passion's wind Life's vessels
Drive hither, thither, o'er the ocean's scope,
A flower there is, from them that sheltered nestles
And buds in hope.
There, in the leaf-soil left of perished passions,
In the tree-shadow of the Past-time's gloom,
It sleeps, unhindered of the waste world's fashions,
And waits to bloom.
Nor May nor August is a second comer
In the heart's seasons, but too well it knows.
It waits, to flower, for Peace's Indian Summer,
Before the snows.
