O but the wind is keen
And the sky is dull as lead!
If only leaves were brown,
Were only withered and dead,
Perhaps I might not frown,
However the storm might beat.
But to see their delicate green
Tossing in wind and rain,
Whirling in lane and street,
Trampled in mud and dirt:
Alive to the winter-pain,
To the sting and the hurt.
I wish they all were hid
In a fleecy coverlid;
I wish I could bury the rose
Under the northern snows;
And make the land take off
The purple and red and buff,
And flamy tints that please
Her tropical Spanish taste;
And mantle her shapeliness,
Just once in the delicate dress
Of her sisters, fairer-faced,
Over the seas.
If but for a single day
This vivid, incessant green
Might vanish quite away,
And never a leaf be seen;
And woods be brown and sere,
And flowers disappear:
If only I might not see
Forever the fruit on the tree,
The rose on its stem!
For spring is sweet, and summer
Ever a blithe new-comer-
But one tires even of them.
You were pleasant to behold,
When days were warm and bland,
My beautiful “Cloth-of-Gold, ”
My rose of roses, nursed
With careful, patient hand.
So sunny and content-
With butterflies about you,
And bees that came and went,
And could not do without you.
But better to die at first,
With the earliest blossom born
Than to live so crumpled and torn,
So dripping and forlorn.
Better that you should be
Safe-housed and asleep,
Under the tough brown bark,
Like you kindred over the sea:
Nor know if the day be drear,
Nor heed if the sky be dark,
If it rain or snow.
But ah! to be captive here,
The live-long, dragging year,
To the skies that smile and weep;
The skies that thrill and woo you,
That torture and undo you;
That lure and hold you so-
And will not let you go!
