Hearing their song I trace
the secret of their grace.
Ah, could I this fair time
so fashion into rhyme,
The poem that I sing

would be the voice of spring.

9

JANUARY

COLD is the winter day, misty and dark:
The sunless sky with faded gleams is rent:
And patches of thin snow outlying, mark

The landscape with a drear disfigurement.

The trees their mournful branches lift aloft:
The oak with knotty twigs is full of trust,
With bud-thronged bough the cherry in the croft;
The chestnut holds her gluey knops upthrust.

No birds sing, but the starling chaps his bill And chatters mockingly; the newborn lambs. Within their strawbuilt fold beneath the hill

Answer with plaintive cry their bleating dams.

Their voices melt in welcome dreams of spring, Green grass and leafy trees and sunny skies: My fancy decks the woods, the thrushes sing, Meadows are gay, bees hum and scents arise.

And God the Maker doth my heart grow bold
To praise for wintry works not understood,
Who all the worlds and ages doth behold,
Evil and good as one, and all as good.

ΙΟ

A ROBIN

FLAME-THROATED robin on the topmost bough
Of the leafless oak, what singest thou?

Hark! he telleth how

'Spring is coming now; Spring is coming now.

Now ruddy are the elmi-tops against the blue sky,
The pale larch donneth her jewelry ;

Red fir and black fir sigh,

And I am lamenting the year gone by.

The bushes where I nested are all cut down,
They are felling the tall trees one by one,
And my mate is dead and gone,

In the winter she died and left me lone.

She lay in the thicket where I fear to go;
For when the March-winds after the snow
The leaves away did blow,

She was not there, and my heart is woe:
And sad is my song, when I begin to sing,
As I sit in the sunshine this merry spring:
Like a withered leaf I cling

To the white oak-bough, while the wood doth ring. Spring is coming now, the sun again is gay;

Each day like a last spring's happy day.'—

Thus sang

he;

then from his spray

He saw me listening and flew away.

I I

I NEVER shall love the snow again
Since Maurice died:

With corniced drift it blocked the lane
And sheeted in a desolate plain

The country side.

The trees with silvery rime bedight
Their branches bare.

By day no sun appeared; by night.
The hidden moon shed thievish light
In the misty air.

We fed the birds that flew around
In flocks to be fed :

No shelter in holly or brake they found.
The speckled thrush on the frozen ground
Lay frozen and dead.

We skated on stream and pond; we cut
The crinching snow

To Doric temple or Arctic hut ;

We laughed and sang at nightfall, shut
By the fireside glow.

Yet grudged we our keen delights before.
Maurice should come.

We said, In-door or out-of-door

We shall love life for a month or more,
When he is home.

They brought him home; 'twas two days late For Christmas day:

Wrapped in white, in solemn state,

A flower in his hand, all still and straight
Our Maurice lay.

And two days ere the year outgave
We laid him low.

The best of us truly were not brave,
When we laid Maurice down in his grave

Under the snow.

12

NIGHTINGALES

BEAUTIFUL must be the mountains whence ye come, And bright in the fruitful valleys the streams, wherefrom Ye learn your song:

Where are those starry woods? O might I wander there, Among the flowers, which in that heavenly air

Bloom the year long!

Nay, barren are those mountains and spent the streams:
Our song is the voice of desire, that haunts our dreams,
A throe of the heart,

Whose pining visions dim, forbidden hopes profound,
No dying cadence nor long sigh can sound,
For all our art.

Alone, aloud in the raptured ear of men
We pour our dark nocturnal secret; and then,
As night is withdrawn

From these sweet-springing meads and bursting boughs of

May,

Dream, while the innumerable choir of day

Welcome the dawn.

13

A SONG of my heart, as the sun peered o'er the sea,
Was born at morning to me:

And out of my treasure-house it chose

A melody, that arose

Of all fair sounds that I love, remembered together
In one; and I knew not whether

From waves of rustling wheat it was,

Recoveringly that pass:

Or a hum of bees in the queenly robes of the lime:

Or a descant in pairing time.

Of warbling birds: or watery bells

Of rivulets in the hills:

Or whether on blazing downs a high lark's hymn
Alone in the azure dim :

Or a sough of pines, when the midnight wold
Is solitary and cold:

Or a lapping river-ripple all day chiding
The bow of my wherry gliding

Down Thames, between his flowery shores
Re-echoing to the oars :

Or anthem notes, wherever in archèd quires
The unheeded music twires,

And, centuries by, to the stony shade
Flies following and to fade:

Or a homely prattle of children's voices gay
'Mong garden joys at play :

Or a sundown chaunting of solemn rooks :
Or memory of my books,

Which hold the words that poets in many a tongue
To the irksome world have sung:

Or the voice, my happy lover, of thee
Now separated from me.

A ruby of fire in the burning sleep of my brain
Long hid my thought had lain,

Forgotten dreams of a thousand days
Ingathering to its rays,

The light of life in darkness tempering long;
Till now a perfect song,

A jewel of jewels it leapt above

To the coronal of my love.