The Comrades :: :: University of Virginia Library

When springing meads are freshly dight,
And trees new-leafed throw scarce a shadow,
The green earth shows no fairer sight
Than soft-eyed kine and blowing meadow.
Too calm for care, too slow for mirth,
Amid the shower, amid the gleam,
The great mild mother-creatures seem
Half-waking forms o' the dreamy earth.

And down the pathway through the grass
To school the merry children pass,
Singing a rhyme in the April morns,
How—There's red for the furrows, and white for the daisies,
Brown eyes for the brooks, for the trees crumpled horns!

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When quivering leaves, and oes of light
Between the leaves, the deep sward dapple,
When may-boughs cream in curdling white,
And maids envy the bloom o' the apple,
The great mild mother-creatures lie,
And grow, in absence of the sun,
One with the moon and stars, and one
With silvery cloud and darkest sky.

And down the pathway through the grass
To school the merry children pass,
Singing a rhyme in the morns of June,
How—There's white for the cloudlets, and black for the darkness,
And two polished horns for the sweet sickle moon.