University of Virginia Library

AN APRIL ELEGY.

Seek for no omens in spring: the face of the spring is deceptive;
Ask not the leaves that are new ever a hope to confirm;
No, nor put faith in the birds renewing their chorus of promise;
Old is the song that they sing, old as the world and deceit.
Ye who seek omens in spring, have ye ne'er, in the course of existence,
Noted the fate that on earth follows the things that are fair?
Sadness there lurks in the air, in the air that is balmy, of April,
Even as under a smile, often a boding is hid.
Vague is the feeling and dreamy; a sense of the ill that the future
Bringeth to what is too fair, bringeth to what is too good.
Ah, I remember a day, when the blossoms, as now, in the orchards,
Lay in a heap as in flakes, close round the stem of each tree;
When, in the air of the morning, a shower had left, as at present,
Odours earthy and rare, when it was sweet to be out;
When, as in love with herself, and oblivious of all that is fleeting,
Nature, restored unto youth, smiled in her beauty divine;
All that is freshest and sweetest, she laid on her board in profusion,
Freely their share of her feast bidding all beings to take.
All that had, torpid for months, reposed on the bosom of winter,
Bursting the numbing embrace, stepped into life at her call;
All that was injured and ill, obeying the quickening summons,
Crawled in the warmth of the sun, feeling a moment of strength.
Thus, among others, a youth, at last on this morning of mornings,
After long weary months spent in seclusion and pain,
Feeble and dizzy, emerged, and looked on the earth in her beauty,
Just at the moment when spring wholly her garb had renewed.
All was so new and so strange; the trees and the houses familiar,
Different from what they had been, larger or smaller, appeared.
Yet, when a moment had passed, and things had resumed their proportions,
Nought in the landscape was changed; only the season was new.
Taking the hand of the friend who had watched by his bed in his illness,
Sadly and faintly the youth murmured this final appeal:
“Look how the leaves are unfurled! how the blossoms are strewn on the pathway!
List to the song of the birds, there in the boughs overhead!
Ah, what a beautiful world! no, never so fair have I seen it;
Why is it shown to me thus, if I so soon must depart?
Is there, ye leaves, of the life that is poured at this time without measure
Into the lap of the world, no tiny portion for me?
Not when all Nature revives, and the sunshine of April all-healing,
Raises the flower that droops, nipped by the frost of the night?
Not when all creatures that be, on earth and in air and in water,
Quiver with strength new-infused? Am I alone left behind?
Am I forgotten by spring?” But Nature smiled on in her beauty,
Listening not to his prayer, breathed at her opening feast.
All on his footpath was transient; the things he invoked were all fleeting;
Scarce had they come into life, all disappeared from the scene.
Where was the green overhead, and the birds with their singing that filled it?
Where was the green under foot, six little months from that day?
This was the last of his springs; and the first of the vapours autumnal,
Ended his poor reprieve, ended his hope and his fear.
None should too rashly found hopes on the sunshine of April; for autumn,
Silent and pallid and bare, treads in the footsteps of spring.