Now Spring is here and all the world is white, I will go forth, and where the forest robes Itself in green, and every hill and height Crowns its fair head with blossoms,--spirit globes Of hyacinth and crocus dashed with dew,-- I will forget my grief, And thee, O Sorrow, gazing on the blue, Beneath a last year's leaf, Of some brief violet the south wind woos, Or bluet, whence the west wind raked the snow; The baby eyes of love, the darling hues Of happiness, that thou canst never know, O child of pain and woe.
On some hoar upland, sweet with clustered thorns, Hard by a river's windy white of waves, I shall sit down with Spring,--whose eyes are morns Of light; whose cheeks the rose of health enslaves,-- And so forget thee braiding in her hair The snowdrop, tipped with green, The cool-eyed primrose and the trillium fair, And moony celandine. Contented so to lie within her arms, Forgetting all the sear and sad and wan, Remembering love alone, who o'er earth's storms, High on the mountains of perpetual dawn, Leads the glad hours on.
Or in the peace that follows storm, when Even, Within the west, stands dreaming lone and far, Clad on with green and silver, and the Heaven Is brightly brooched with one gold-glittering star. I will lie down beside some mountain lake, 'Round which the tall pines sigh, And breathing musk of rain from boughs that shake Storm balsam from on high, Make friends of Dream and Contemplation high And Music, listening to the mocking-bird,-- Who through the hush sends its melodious cry,-- And so forget a while that other word, That all loved things must die.
Out of the East, as from an unknown shore, Thou comest with thy children in thine arms,-- Slumber and Dream,--whom mortals all adore, Their flowing raiment sculptured to their charms: Soft on thy breast thy lovely children rest, Laid like twin roses in one balmy nest. Silent thou comest, swiftly too and slow. There is no other presence like to thine, When thou approachest with thy babes divine, Thy shadowy face above them bending low, Blowing the ringlets from their brows of snow.
Oft have I taken Sleep from thy dark arms, And fondled her fair head, with poppies wreathed, Within my bosom's depths, until its storms With her were hushed and I but faintly breathed. And then her sister, Dream, with frolic art Arose from rest, and on my sleeping heart Blew bubbles of dreams where elfin worlds were lost; Worlds where my stranger soul sang songs to me, And talked with spirits by a rainbowed sea, Or smiled, an unfamiliar shape of frost, Floating on gales of breathless melody.