Flower Pieces and other poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Come again, delightful Spring,
Hasten, if you love us;
Let your woodbine-garland swing,
Vault the blue above us!
Nay, already she is here:
Stealthy laughters quiver
Through the ground, the atmosphere,
Wood, and bubbling river.

Sweet the herald west wind blows,
Green peeps out from melting snows;
Snowdrop-flow'r, and crocus, dawn
With daffodil around the lawn;
Their bushy rods the sallows gild;
The clamorous rooks begin to build,
Watch the farmer dig and sow
In his miry fields below,
Gravely follow in the furrows
Picking where his plough unburrows.
Pearl-white lambkins frisk and bleat
Or kneeling tug the kindly teat;
The roguish rat is creeping nigh
His darksome cavern; low and high,
Through sun-gleam or soft rainy gloom,
Like children coursing every room
Of a new house, the swallows glance,
Wafted over Spain and France
From the sultry solemn Nile's
Mysterious lakes of crocodiles,
And the desert-lion's roar,
To a greener gentler shore.
Native lark from stair to stair
Of brilliant cloud and azure air

Mounts to the morning's top, and sings
His merry hymns on trembling wings,
Tireless, till the cressets high
Twinkle down from cooler sky.
What beholds he on this earth?
A rising tide of love and mirth.
—And was it I who lately said,
‘Mirth is fled, and Love is dead,’
For chill and darkness on the day,
As on my weak and weary spirit lay?

Welcome, every breeze and show'r;
Sun that courts the blossom;
Every new delicious flow'r
Heap'd for Maia's bosom!

Every bird!—no bird alone,
Always two together;
Spring inspiring every tone,
Flushing every feather.

Verdure's tufted on the briar
Like crockets of a minster-spire;
Free sprouts the youngling corn; a light
Is on the hills; dim nooks grow bright
In blossom; now with scent and sight
And song, the childhood of the year
Renews our own; we see and hear,
We drink the fragrance, as of yore,—
A gleam, a thrill, a breath, no more.
Away, dull musing! who are these
Under the fresh-leaved linden trees?
Three favourite Children of the Spring,
Who lightly run, as half on wing,
Dorothy, Alicia, Mary;
Over moorlands wide and airy,

Deep in dells of early flow'rs,
They have been abroad for hours,
Flow'rs themselves, and fairer yet
Than primrose, windflow'r, violet,
Or even June's wild-rose to come.
Frost never touch their opening bloom
The tender fearless life to check!
—Alicia's hat is on her neck,
With flying curls and glowing face
And ringing laugh, she wins the race;
Her eyes were made for sorrow's cure,
And doubts of Heav'n to reassure.
Veils of fresh and fragrant rain
Sinking over the green plain,
Founts of sunny beams that lie
Scatter'd through the vernal sky,
The million-fold expanding woods,
Are less delightful than these children's moods.

'Tis not life, to pine and cloy;
Sickness utters treason;
Best they live, who best enjoy
Every good in season.

Glad, with moisten'd eyes, I learn
April's own caressing:
Children, every month in turn
Bring you three a blessing!