Viii

The youth, the beauty and disdain Of birth, death does not know, Compel my heart with longing like to pain When the spring breezes blow. The fragrance and the heat Of their soft breath, whose musk makes sweet Each woodland way, each wild retreat, Seem saying in my ear, “Hark, and behold! Before a week be gone This barren woodside and this leafless wold A million flowers shall invade With argent and azure, pearl and gold,-- Like rainbow fragments scattered of the dawn,-- Here making bright, here wan Each foot of earth, each glen and glimmering glade, Each rood of windy wood, Where late gaunt Winter stood, Shaggy with snow and howling at the sky; Where even now the Springtime seems afraid To whisper of the beauty she designs, The flowery campaign that she now outlines Within her soul; her heart’s conspiracy To take the world with loveliness; defy And then o’erwhelm the Death--that Winter throned Amid the trees,--with love that she hath owned Since God informed her from His very breath, Giving her right triumphant over Death. And, irresistible, Her heart’s deep ecstasy shall swell, Taking the form of flower, leaf, and blade, Invading every dell, And sweeping, surge on surge, Around the world, like some exultant raid, Even to the heaven’s verge. Soon shall her legions storm Death’s ramparts, planting Life’s fair standard there, The banner which her beauty hath in care, Beauty, that shall eventuate With all the pomp and pageant and the state, That are a part of power, and that wait On majesty, to which it, too, is heir.”