Spring Song In The City
WHO remains in London,
In the streets with me,
Now that Spring is blowing
Warm winds from the sea;
Now that trees grow green and tall,
Now the sun shines mellow,
And with moist primroses all
English lanes are yellow?
Little barefoot maiden,
Selling violets blue,
Hast thou ever pictur’d
Where the sweetlings grew?
Oh, the warm wild woodland ways,
Deep in dewy grasses,
Where the windblown shadow strays,
Scented as it passes!
Pedlar breathing deeply,
Toiling into town,
With the dusty highway
You are dusky brown;
Hast thou seen by daisied leas,
And by rivers flowing,
Lilac-ringlets which the breeze
Loosens lightly blowing?
Out of yonder wagon
Pleasant hay-scents float,
He who drives it carries
A daisy in his coat:
Oh, the English meadows, fair
Far beyond all praises!
Freckled orchids everywhere
Mid the snow of daisies!
Now in busy silence
Broods the nightingale,
Choosing his love’s dwelling
In a dimpled dale;
Round the leafy bower they raise
Rose-trees wild are springing;
Underneath, thro’ the green haze,
Bounds the brooklet singing.
And his love is silent
As a bird can be,
For the red buds only
Fill the red rose-tree;
Just as buds and blossoms blow
He ’ll begin his tune,
When all is green and roses glow
Underneath the moon.
Nowhere in the valleys
Will the wind be still,
Everything is waving,
Wagging at his will:
Blows the milkmaid’s kirtle clean,
With her hand press’d on it;
Lightly o’er the hedge so green
Blows the ploughboy’s bonnet.
Oh, to be a roaming
In an English dell!
Every nook is wealthy,
All the world looks well,
Tinted soft the Heavens glow,
Over Earth and Ocean,
Waters flow, breezes blow,
All is light and motion!
A Dead March
PLAY me a march, low-ton’d and slow—a march for a silent tread,
Fit for the wandering feet of one who dreams of the silent dead,
Lonely, between the bones below and the souls that are overhead.
Here for a while they smil’d and sang, alive in the interspace,
Here with the grass beneath the foot, and the stars above the face,
Now are their feet beneath the grass, and whither has flown their grace?
Who shall assure us whence they come, or tell us the way they go?
Verily, life with them was joy, and, now they have left us, woe,
Once they were not, and now they are not, and this is the sum we know.
Orderly range the seasons due, and orderly roll the stars.
How shall we deem the soldier brave who frets of his wounds and scars?
Are we as senseless brutes that we should dash at the well-seen bars?
No, we are here, with feet unfix’d, but ever as if with lead
Drawn from the orbs which shine above to the orb on which we tread,
Down to the dust from which we came and with which we shall mingle dead.
No, we are here to wait, and work, and strain our banish’d eyes,
Weary and sick of soil and toil, and hungry and fain for skies
Far from the reach of wingless men, and not to be scal’d with cries.
No, we are here to bend our necks to the yoke of tyrant Time,
Welcoming all the gifts he gives us—glories of youth and prime,
Patiently watching them all depart as our heads grow white as rime.
Why do we mourn the days that go—for the same sun shines each day,
Ever a spring her primrose hath, and ever a May her may;
Sweet as the rose that died last year is the rose that is born to-day.
Do we not too return, we men, as ever the round earth whirls?
Never a head is dimm’d with gray but another is sunn’d with curls;
She was a girl and he was a boy, but yet there are boys and girls.
Ah, but alas for the smile of smiles that never but one face wore;
Ah, for the voice that has flown away like a bird to an unseen shore;
Ah, for the face—the flower of flowers—that blossoms on earth no more.
