Classic Poem

I STRODE through the depth of the marsh in the stark winter-tide of the year;
The pools were as glass, and the grass was umber and shriveled and sere;
And the trees waved their skeleton arms in the whirl and the swirl of the flaw,
While around there was never a sound save the crow with its ominous " caw " ;
The land seemed the land of the lost, of despair, desolation and dole,
And its gloom, like an evil at night, crept into the room of my soul.

Then a word, like a bird in the dusk, when the shadows have mantled the hill,
Made a song, — just a word, — but I felt the dead heart in me tremble and thrill,
Thrill to life, and my fibres and thews were as those of one ready to leap,
For I knew, on a sudden, the dolor was but as the blessing of sleep,
The slumber of sod and of rush and of fern and of leaf on the tree,
And they waited but only the word to burst from their bonds and be free.

And the word, it shall come on a day when the wind shall blow up from the south,
With the winnow of shimmering wings, and a slim pipe of gold at its mouth;
It may be at droop of the dusk, or it may be at lift of the sun,
But all of earth's tendrils shall quicken, and all of earth's waters shall run.
God moulded the word, and He spake it to be a transfiguring thing,
A joy in man's ears, and a symbol eternal, the magical " Spring! "