Spring
I walk and wonder
To hear the birds sing,
Without you my lady
How can there be Spring?
I see the pink blossoms
That slept for a year;
But who could have woke them,
While you were not near?
Birds sing to the blossoms;
Blind, dreaming your pink,
These blush to the songsters,
Your music they think.
So well had you taught them,
To look and to sing;
Your bloom and your music;
The ways of the Spring.
My Days
My days are but the tombs of buried hours ;
Which tombs are hidden in the piled years ;
But from the mounds there spring up many flowers,
Whose beauty well repays their cost of tears.
Time, like a sexton, pileth mould on mould,
Minutes on minutes till the tombs are high ;
But from the dust there fall some grains of gold,
And the dead corpse leaves what will never die-
It may be but a thought, the nursling seed
Of many thoughts, of many a high desire ;
Some little act that stirs a noble deed,
Like breath rekindling a smouldering fire :
They only live who have not lived in vain,
For in their works their life returns again.
Spring, 1916
Slow, rigid, is this masquerade
That passes as through a difficult air :
Heavily-heavily passes.
What has she fed on ? Who her table laid
Through the three seasons ? What forbidden fare
Ruined her as a mortal lass is ?
I played with her two years ago,
Who might be now her own sister in stone;
So altered from her May mien,
When round the pink a necklace of warm snow
Laughed to her throat where my mouth's touch had gone.
How is this, ruined Queen?
Who lured her vivid beauty so
'l'o be that strained chill thing that moves
So ghastly midst her young brood
Of pregnant shoots that she for men did grow ?
Where are the strong men who made these their loves ?
Spring ! God pity your mood !
