Spring And Death

Time, old and fertile serpent that endures from spring to spring, softly beneath the ground, now at the root of life snake-darkness pours in feathered coils, that choke without a sound winter, the death, that dies each spring to rise on the right hand of May in Paradise.

Here in the North the black and haggard beech, as though the nails were driven through the palm, stretches gaunt arms too twisted to beseech even the spear, and death’s atrocious calm, nor dreams she earns by her slow agony the green and drifting kingdom of the tree.

But in your South the earth is Magdalene to death, and wins him, leaning from gold sheaves her white, prevailing arms, that out of green lift his pale head against her through the leaves; and death looks upward through her heavy hair finding all colour, song and fragrance there.

Wild lavender and pomegranate-tree, cypress and blue grape-hyacinth, and pale wind-flower that we call anemone, you are life’s brief and many-coloured veil, with which death, like a bridegroom, in the South covers his bride, and sinks against her mouth.

Death--but there is no death where these things be, and, though the snake may coil his feathered ring, grape-hyacinth and pomegranate-tree! Where is his victory, what is his sting, when even the Judas-blossom, bursting the prison of old dead treasons, whispers “He is risen.”

And hark! as though death were the fabled thorn, upon which life, to give her soul release in music, leaned, the nightingale’s high scorn touches the flute of night on moonlit keys, and with the silver star-dust of her breath muffles the wings triumphant over death.