spring

How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean
Are thy returns! ev'n as the flowers in spring;
To which, besides their own demean,
The late-past frosts tributes of pleasures bring.
Grief melts away
Like snow in May,
As if there were no such cold thing.

Who would have thought my shrivl'd heart
Could have recover'd greenness? It was gone
Quite under ground; as flowers depart
To see their mother-root, when they have blown;
Where they together
All the hard weather

The waters rush'd, the waters rose,

A fisherman sat by,
While on his line in calm repose

He cast his patient eye.
And as he sat, and hearken'd there,

The flood was cleft in twain,
And, lo! a dripping mermaid fair

Sprang from the troubled main.

She sang to him, and spake the while:

"Why lurest thou my brood,
With human wit and human guile

From out their native flood?
Oh, couldst thou know how gladly dart

The fish across the sea,
Thou wouldst descend, e'en as thou art,

The Fir-Tree looked on stars, but loved the Brook!
"O silver-voiced! if thou wouldst wait,
My love can bravely woo." All smiles forsook
The brook's white face. "Too late!
Too late! I go to wed the sea.
I know not if my love would curse or bless thee.
I may not, dare not, tarry to caress thee,
Oh, do not follow me!

The Fir-Tree moaned and moaned till spring;
Then laughed in manic joy to feel
Early one day, the woodsmen of the King
Sign him with a sign of burning steel,

THE WATERS make a music low:
The river reeds
Are trembling to the tunes of long ago—
Dead days and deeds
Become alive again, as on
I float, and float,
Through shadows of the golden summers gone
And springs remote.

Above my head the trees bloom out
In white and red
Great blossoms, that make glad the air about;
And old suns shed

Their rays athwart them. Ah, the light
Is bright and fair!
No suns that shine upon me now are bright

The first approach of the sweet spring
Returning here once more,--
The memory of the love that holds
In my fond heart such power,--
The thrush again his song assaying,--
The little rills o'er pebbles playing,
And sparkling as they fall,--
The memory recall
Of her on whom my heart's desire
Is, shall be, fixed till I expire.

With every season fresh and new
That love is more inspiring:
Her eyes, her face, all bright with joy,--
Her coming, her retiring,
Her faithful words, her winning ways,--

SECTION ONE

"Give the engines room,
Give the engines room."
Louder, faster
The little band-master
Whips up the fluting,
Hurries up the tooting.
He thinks that he stands,
[*] The reins in his hands,
In the fire-chief's place
In the night alarm chase.
The cymbals whang,
The kettledrums bang: —
"Clear the street,
Clear the street,
Clear the street — Boom, boom.
In the evening gloom,
In the evening gloom,
Give the engines room,
Give the engines room.

I'm a pretty little thing,
Always coming with the spring;
In the meadows green I'm found,
Peeping just above the ground,
And my stalk is cover'd flat
With a white and yellow hat.

Little Mary, when you pass
Lightly o'er the tender grass,
Skip about, but do not tread
On my bright but lowly head,
For I always seem to say,
"Surely winter's gone away."

There's a fiddler in the street,
And the children all are dancing:
Two dozen lightsome feet
Springing and prancing.

Pleasure he gives to you,
Dance then, and spare not!
For the poor fiddler's due,
Know not and care not.

While you are prancing,
Let the fiddler play.
When you're tired of dancing
He may go away.

(Composed at Clevedon, Somersetshire)

My pensive Sara! thy soft cheek reclined
Thus on mine arm, most soothing sweet it is
To sit beside our Cot, our Cot o'ergrown
With white-flower'd Jasmin, and the broad-leav'd Myrtle,
(Meet emblems they of Innocence and Love!)
And watch the clouds, that late were rich with light,
Slow saddening round, and mark the star of eve
Serenely brilliant (such should Wisdom be)
Shine opposite! How exquisite the scents
Snatch'd from yon bean-field! and the world so hushed!

The trumpets of the four winds of the world
From the ends of the earth blow battle; the night heaves,
With breasts palpitating and wings refurled,
With passion of couched limbs, as one who grieves
Sleeping, and in her sleep she sees uncurled
Dreams serpent-shapen, such as sickness weaves,
Down the wild wind of vision caught and whirled,
Dead leaves of sleep, thicker than autumn leaves,
Shadows of storm-shaped things,
Flights of dim tribes of kings,
The reaping men that reap men for their sheaves,