 | The bird and the bell, with other poems |  |
I.
'T was earliest morning in the early spring,In Florence. Winter, dark and damp and chill,
Had yielded to the fruit-trees' blossoming,
Though sullen rains swept from the mountains still.
The tender green scarce seemed to have a will
To peep above the sod and greet the sky,—
Like an o'er-timid child who dreads a stranger's eye.
| The bird and the bell, with other poems | |