TO THE SPRING WIND
Ah, what a changeling!
Yester you dashed from the west,
Altho' it is Spring,
And scattered the hail with maniac zest
Thro' the shivering corn – in scorn
For the labour of God and man.
And now from the plentiful South you haste,
With lovingest fingers,
To ruefully lift and wooingly fan
The lily that lingers a-faint on the stalk:
As if the chill waste
Of the earth's May-dreams,
The flowers so full of her joy,
Were not – as it seems —
A wanton attempt to destroy.
THE RAMBLE
Down the road which asters tangle,
Thro' the gap where green-briar twines,
By the path where dry leaves dangle
Sere from the ivy vines
We go – by sedgy fallows
And along the stifled brook,
Till it stops in lushy mallows
Just at the bridge's crook.
Then, again, o'er fence, thro' thicket,
To the mouth of the rough ravine,
Where the weird leaf-hidden cricket
Chirrs thro' the weirder green,
There's a way, o'er rocks – but quicker
Is the beat of heart and foot,
As the beams above us flicker
Sun upon moss and root!
And we leap – as wildness tingles
From the air into our blood —
With a cry thro' golden dingles
Hid in the heart of the wood.
Oh, the wood with winds a-wrestle!
With the nut and acorn strown!
Oh, the wood where creepers trestle
Tree unto tree o'ergrown!
With a climb the ledging summit
Of the hill is reached in glee.
For an hour we gaze off from it
Into the sky's blue sea.
But a bell and sunset's crimson
Soon recall the homeward path.
And we turn as the glory dims on
The hay-field's mounded math.
Thro' the soft and silent twilight
We come, to the stile at last,
As the clear undying eyelight
Of the stars tells day is past.
RETURN
Ah, it was here – September
And silence filled the air —
I came last year to remember,
And muse, hid away from care.
It was here I came – the thistle
Was trusting her seed to the wind;
The quail in the croft gave whistle
As now – and the fields lay thinned.
I know how the hay was steeping,
Brown mows under mellow haze;
How a frail cloud-flock was creeping
As now over lone sky-ways.
Just there where the catbird's calling
Her mock-hurt note by the shed,
The use-worn wain was stalling
In the weedy brook's dry bed.
And the cricket, lone little chimer
Of day-long dreams in the vines,
Chirred on like a doting rhymer
O'er-vain of his firstling lines.
He's near me now by the aster,
Beneath whose shadowy spray
A sultry bee seeps faster
As the sun slips down the day.
And there are the tall primroses
Like maidens waiting to dance.
They stood in the same shy poses
Last year, as if to entrance
The stately mulleins to waken
From death and lead them around: