Hearing their song I trace would be the voice of spring. 9 JANUARY COLD is the winter day, misty and dark: The landscape with a drear disfigurement. The trees their mournful branches lift aloft: 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 ΙΟ A ROBIN FLAME-THROATED robin on the topmost bough Hark! he telleth how 'Spring is coming now; Spring is coming now. Now ruddy are the elmi-tops against the blue sky, Red fir and black fir sigh, And I am lamenting the year gone by. The bushes where I nested are all cut down, In the winter she died and left me lone. She lay in the thicket where I fear to go; She was not there, and my heart is woe: 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 With corniced drift it blocked the lane The country side. The trees with silvery rime bedight By day no sun appeared; by night. We fed the birds that flew around No shelter in holly or brake they found. We skated on stream and pond; we cut To Doric temple or Arctic hut ; We laughed and sang at nightfall, shut Yet grudged we our keen delights before. We said, In-door or out-of-door We shall love life for a month or more, 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 And two days ere the year outgave The best of us truly were not brave, 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: Whose pining visions dim, forbidden hopes profound, Alone, aloud in the raptured ear of men 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, And out of my treasure-house it chose A melody, that arose Of all fair sounds that I love, remembered together 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 Or a sough of pines, when the midnight wold Or a lapping river-ripple all day chiding Down Thames, between his flowery shores Or anthem notes, wherever in archèd quires And, centuries by, to the stony shade Or a homely prattle of children's voices gay Or a sundown chaunting of solemn rooks : Which hold the words that poets in many a tongue Or the voice, my happy lover, of thee A ruby of fire in the burning sleep of my brain Forgotten dreams of a thousand days The light of life in darkness tempering long; A jewel of jewels it leapt above To the coronal of my love. |