Classic Poem

Seal up the soft and thirsty earth
With cold, with clogging cold, with snow:
We must be secret in our mirth
And if we laugh she must not know.

In April when the small rains
Have loosened through the winter leaves
Her blood is swollen in our veins,
We are the summer she conceives,

And summers when the pansy root
Can penetrate in crumbling clay
She opens to us underfoot;
She drinks us when the months decay

That now beneath the snow is still
And stopped with cold. Ah, till the year
Melts we are men and if we will
May laugh, may laugh —
She cannot hear.