I

The hurl and hurry of the winds of March, That tore the ash and bowed the pine and larch, And filled the night with rushings,--like the crew Of the Wild Huntsman,--and the days with hue And cry of storm, soft in the heaven’s porch Have laid them down:--loud winds, that trampled through The forests with enormous, scythe-like sweep, And from the darkened deep, The battlemented heavens, thunder-blue, Rumbled the arch, The rocking arch of all the booming oaks, With stormy chariot-spokes: Chariots, from which wild bugle-blasts they blew In warlike challenge.... Now the windflower sweet Misses the fury of their ruining feet, The trumpet-thunder of resistless flight, Crashing and vast, obliterating light; Sweeping the skeleton madness down Of last-year’s leaves; and, overhead, Hurrying the giant foliage of night, Gaunt clouds that streamed with tempest. ... Now each crown Of ancient woods, that clamored with their tread, The frenzy of their passage, stoops no more, Hearing no more their clarion-command, Their chariot-hurl and the wild whip in hand. No more, no more, The forests rock and roar And tumult with their shoutings. Hushed and still Is the green-gleaming and the sunlit hill, Along whose sides, Flushing the dewy moss and rainy grass-- Beneath the topaz-tinted sassafras, Pale, aromatic as some orient wine-- The violet fire of the bluet glides, The amaranthine flame Of sorrel and of bluebell runs; And through the drabs and duns Of rotting leaves, the moonéd celandine, Line upon lovely line, Deliberate, goldens into birth: And, ruby and rose, the moccasin-flower hides: Innumerable flowers, with which she writes her name, April, upon the page, The winter-withered parchment of old earth; Her fragrant autograph, that gives it worth And loveliness that take away its age.