Carol and Cadence :: :: University of Virginia Library

The fields of ice spread, straitening, Eastward, Westward;
The dull sky darkles, threatening, earth above;
The air of birds is empty, winging questward
To Light and Love.

Forgotten have the forests life and leaving;
Beneath the frosts of February dumb,
The world-all cow'rs, unhoping, unbelieving
In Spring to come.

Love in your eyes died down with Autumn ending;
It fled, like birds, afar with Winter time.
Will it, as they, return, when Spring, descending,
Brings back the Prime?

I know not, I; but this I know, that, ever,
When Winter slackens from the woods and fields,
Each year my straitened breast to Spring's endeavour
Uneather yields;

And soon, meseems, like some old beggar, chosen,
When hope is past the healing, to be king,
My overweathered heart will be too frozen
To welcome Spring.