A GHAZEL OF SPRING.
THE bird of the morning pipes in the perfumed meads of Spring:
What shall the lips of the lover do in the May but sing?
What shall the heart of the poet do in the prime but hope,
When loosed are the locks of winter and Love in the land is King?
The larks are aloft in heaven; the finches flute on the bough;
The brakes are alive with birdsong, the meadows with blossoming.
The heart of the dreamer panteth with passion; his thought is thrilled
With glory of coming summer and gladness of harvesting:
He heareth the cuckoo calling; he scenteth the rose afar;
He sees in the golden distance the cornfields glittering:
He seeth the ruby clusters aglow on the ripening vines:
'Twixt summer and Spring and autumn his wish is wavering.
The world from the wrack of winter rejoiceth redeemed to be;
The sweet of the year is swelling in every living thing;
The glee of the merry Maytime is glowing in every vein;
There's never a man but the poet that goeth pondering.
Since lover and dreamer revel, since blossom and bird rejoice,
Since all men acclaim the Maytime with carol and pipe and string,
What aileth the sorry singer that he hath no heart to joy,
That he to the new sweet season alone hath no song to sing?
Alack! for the doom he knoweth that doggeth the merry May;
He knoweth the woes of winter tread hard on the heels of Spring:
He knoweth the frost-times follow the track of the flowered year;
He knoweth the autumn cometh and setteth the birds a-wing.
Ye tell him in vain that winter will pass as the Spring hath past;
That May, with the year's returning, new blossoms and birds. will bring:
The joys that are dead, he knoweth, will never again relive;
The hearts that are sere will never again know flowering:
Whatever the future bring us, whatever the new time bear,
It cannot with morning's glamour regild our evening.
Though bright be the blooms it proffer, though perfect its linnets' lilt,
It is not our flowers that flourish, it is not our birds that sing:
They all with our bygone gladness are fled to another clime
And there with our hopes are waiting another sun-rising.
‘Tis thus that the poet goeth alone in the May and mute,
When highway and hill with revel and meadow and moorland ring;
‘Tis thus that, when men are merry and all in the land are glad,
When mad is the world with music and fragrance and flowering,
His eyes, betwixt past and future, are blind to the blaze of noon;
His heart and his soul are haunted with thoughts of another Spring,
With dreams of that mother-country where life shall lie down to rest,
Where peace shall be had for passion and silence for sorrowing.
