SPIRITS OF SPRING
I
Over the summer seas,
From the Hesperides,
Warm as the southern breeze,
Gather the Spirits,
Clad on with sun and rain,
Fire in each ardent vein,
Who, with a wild refrain,
Waken the germs that the Season inherits.
II
See, where they come, like mist,
Gleaming with amethyst,
Trailing the light that kissed
Vine-tangled mountains
Looming o'er tropic lakes,
Where every wind, that shakes
Tamarisk coverts, makes
Music that haunts like the falling of fountains.
III
You may behold the beat
Of their wild hearts of heat,
And their rose-flashing feet
Flying before us:
Hear them among the trees
Whispering like far-off seas,
Waking the drowsy bees,
Wild-birds and flowers and torrents sonorous.
IV
You may behold their eyes,
Star-like, that sapphire dyes,
To which the blossoms rise
Star-like; and shadows
Flee from: and, golden deep,
As through the woods they sweep,
See their wild curls that keep
Asphodel memories that kindle the meadows.
V
Music of forest-streams,
Fragrance and dewy gleams,
Daybreak and dawn and dreams,
High things and lowly,
Mix in their limbs of light,
Which, what they touch of blight,
Quicken to blossom white,
Raise to be beautiful, perfect, and holy.
VI
Come! do not sit and wait
Now that once desolate
Fields are intoxicate
With birds and flowers!
And all the woods are rife
With resurrected life,
Passion and purple strife
Of the warm winds and the turbulent showers.
VII
Come! let us lie and dream
Here by the wildwood stream,
Where many a twinkling gleam
Falls on the rooty
Banks; and the forest glooms
Rain down their redbud blooms,
Armfuls of wild perfumes—
Winds! or Auloniads busy with beauty.
