Classic Poem

Oho, my love, oho, my love, and ho, the bough that shows,
Against the grayness of mid-Lent the color of the rose!
The lights of Spring are in the sky and down among the grass;
Bend low, bend low, ye Kentish reeds, and let two lovers pass!

The plum-tree is a straitened thing; the cherry is but vain;
The thorn but black and empty at the turning of the lane;
Yet mile by mile out in the wind the peach-trees blow and blow,
And which is stem, and which is bloom, not any maid can know.

The ghostly ships sail up to town and past the orchard wall;
There is a leaping in the reeds; they waver and they fall;
For lo, the gusts of God are out; the April time is brief;
The country is a pale red rose, and dropping leaf by leaf.

I do but keep me close beside, and hold my lover's hand;
Along the narrow track we pass across the level land;
The petals whirl about us and the sedge is to our knees;
The ghostly ships sail up, sail up, beyond the stripping trees.

When we are old, when we are cold, and barred is the door,
The memory of this will come and turn us young once more;
The lights of Spring will dim the grass and tremble from the sky;
And all the Kentish reeds bend low to let us two go by!