Classic Poem

Come up, come up, come high enough and free
To match your strong heart with the eagle's wing,
And come a-chasing after spring,
White and green, a lovely thing.
Or did you think that spring was fled
Like a dryad in a tree
In July's maturity?
Or did you think that spring lay dead
To the locusts' litany?
O, follow where the spirit led,
When a silver-dripping morn,
Sudden witch, around you spread
The lake-leaning alders red,
When on your devoted head,
Dreaming of outriding ships
From the sea's apocalypse,
The last wind of winter sent
Star-dust snow, and wonderment.

Come up, for airs are breathing glad and fine,
The rocks climb sunward all in burning gold!
Come up! Upon the edge of the snow-line
That marks the pale lands' uttermost decline
And green's contested splendor of ascent
A bird goes dropping as he flies divine
Reveillé bold,
Evanishing aloud
In an inspired cloud;
And very far below the valleys keep
The sultry calm of their midsummer sleep,
And far above the blue-caved glaciers go.

Here bloom the flowers of a haunting bride,
The buds half-seen before the rainbow died
That scattered here her skiey laughters low.
Where the streaked snow drips earthward in pure light
Are wide-eyed crocus, lavender and white,—
The excellent awakening of snow,—

And violets pulled from the Alpine glow,
And furred hepatica, whose color vies
With the cupped glory of the hyaline
When, kneeling at sunrise,
An angel lifts within his hands its shine
Against the slanting sun, a tremulous grail and sign
Here mystical and still
Across the resurrected summit chill
Is borne the cry unutterably hurled
From walled ice-caverns of another world,
The secret three times purified in dew,
The ranging presence, virginal and new,
Of glory uncreated. Even as Truth
Arises out of windy Memory,
Spring and first youth
Come over the abyss triumphally.