Beneath these fruit-tree boughs that shed
Their snow-white blossoms on my head,
With brightest sunshine round me spread
Of spring’s unclouded weather,
In this sequestered nook how sweet
To sit upon my orchard-seat!
And birds and flowers once more to greet,
My last year’s friends together.

One have I marked, the happiest guest
In all this covert of the blest:
Hail to Thee, far above the rest
In joy of voice and pinion!
Thou, Linnet! in thy green array,
Presiding Spirit here to-day,
Dost lead the revels of the May;
And this is thy dominion.

While birds, and butterflies, and flowers,
Make all one band of paramours,
Thou, ranging up and down the bowers,
Art sole in thy employment:
A Life, a Presence like the Air,
Scattering thy...

There is a wilder'd spot delights me well,
Pent in a corner of my native vale,
Where tiny blossoms with a purple bell
Shiver their beauties to the autumn-gale.
'Tis one of those mean arbours that prevail
With manhood's weakness, still to seek and love
For what is past:--Destruction's axe did fail
To cut it down with its companion grove.
Though but a trifling thorn, oft shelt'ring warm
A brood of summer birds, by nature led
To seek for covert in a hasty storm;
I often think it lifts its lonely cares,
In piteous bloom where all the rest are fled,
Like a poor warrior the rude battle spares.

April. You hearken, my fellow,
Old slumberer down in my heart?
There's a whooping of ice in the rivers;
The sap feels a start.

The snow-melted torrents are brawling;
The hills, orange-misted and blue,
Are touched with the voice of the rainbird
Unsullied and new.

The houses of frost are deserted,
Their slumber is broken and done,
And empty and pale are the portals
Awaiting the sun.

The bands of Arcturus are slackened;
Orion goes forth from his place
On the slopes of the night, leading homeward
His hound from the chase.

The Pleiades weary and follow
The dance of the ghostly dawn;
The revel of silence is over;
Earth's lyric comes on.

A golden flute in the cedars,
A silver pipe in the swales,
And the slow...

A Log-Hut in the solitude,
A clapboard roof to rest beneath!
This side, the shadow-haunted wood;
That side, the sunlight-haunted heath.

At daybreak Morn shall come to me
In raiment of the white winds spun;
Slim in her rosy hand the key
That opes the gateway of the sun.

Her smile shall help my heart enough
With love to labour all the day,
And cheer the road, whose rocks are rough,
With her smooth footprints, each a ray.

At dusk a voice shall call afar,
A lone voice like the whippoorwill's;
And, on her shimmering brow one star,
Night shall descend the western hills.

She at my door till dawn shall stand,
With gothic eyes, that, dark and deep,
Are mirrors of a mystic land,
Fantastic with the towns of sleep.

    Summer is come again. The sun is bright,
    And the soft wind is breathing. Airy joy
    Is sparkling in thine eyes, and in their light
    My soul is shining. Come; our day's employ
    Shall be to revel in unlikely things,
    In gayest hopes, fondest imaginings,
    And make-believes of bliss. Come, we will talk
    Of waning moons, low winds, and a dim sea;
    Till this fair summer, deepening as we walk,
    Has grown a paradise for you and me.

    But ah, those leaves!--it was not summer's mouth
    Breathed such a gold upon them. And look there--
    That beech how red! See, through its boughs, half-bare,
    How low the sun lies in the mid-day south!--
    The sweetness is but one pined memory flown
    Back from our summer, wandering alone!

The poet is, or ought to be, a hater of the city,
    And so, when happiness is mine, and Maud becomes my wife,
We'll look on town inhabitants with sympathetic pity,
    For we shall lead a peaceful and serene Arcadian life.

Then shall I sing in eloquent and most effective phrases,
    The grandeur of geraniums and the beauty of the rose;
Immortalise in deathless strains the buttercups and daisies,
    For even I can hardly be mistaken as to those.

The music of the nightingale will ring from leafy hollow,
    And fill us with a rapture indescribable in words;
And we shall also listen to the robin and the swallow
    (I wonder if a swallow sings?) and ... well, the other birds.

Too long I dwelt in ignorance of all the countless treasures
    Which dwellers i...

In desultory walk through orchard grounds,
Or some deep chestnut grove, oft have I paused
The while a Thrush, urged rather than restrained
By gusts of vernal storm, attuned his song
To his own genial instincts; and was heard
(Though not without some plaintive tones between)
To utter, above showers of blossom swept
From tossing boughs, the promise of a calm,
Which the unsheltered traveler might receive
With thankful spirit. The descant, and the wind
That seemed to play with it in love or scorn,
Encouraged and endeared the strain of words
That haply flowed from me, by fits of silence
Impelled to livelier pace. But now, my Book!
Charged with those lays, and others of like mood,
Or loftier pitch if higher rose the theme,
Go, single yet aspiring to be joined
W...

He set the trumpet to his lips, and lo!
The clash of waves, the roar of winds that blow,
The strife and stress of Nature's warring things,
Rose like a storm-cloud, upon angry wings.

He set the reed-pipe to his lips, and lo!
The wreck of landscape took a rosy glow,
And Life, and Love, and gladness that Love brings
Laughed in the music, like a child that sings.

Master of each, Arch-Master! We that still
Wait in the verge and outskirt of the Hill
Look upward lonely--lonely to the height
Where thou has climbed, for ever, out of sight!

These summer-birds did with thy master stay
The times of warmth, but then they flew away,
Leaving their poet, being now grown old,
Expos'd to all the coming winter's cold.
But thou, kind Prew, did'st with my fates abide
As well the winter's as the summer's tide;
For which thy love, live with thy master here,
Not one, but all the seasons of the year.

The minstrels played their Christmas tune
To-night beneath my cottage-eaves;
While, smitten by a lofty moon,
The encircling laurels, thick with leaves,
Gave back a rich and dazzling sheen,
That overpowered their natural green.

Through hill and valley every breeze
Had sunk to rest with folded wings:
Keen was the air, but could not freeze,
Nor check, the music of the strings;
So stout and hardy were the band
That scraped the chords with strenuous hand.

And who but listened? till was paid
Respect to every inmate’s claim,
The greeting given, the music played
In honour of each household name,
Duly pronounced with lusty call,
And “Merry Christmas” wished to all.

Go, sun, since go you must,
The dusky evening lowers above our sky,
Our sky which was so blue and sweetly fair;
Night is not terrible that we should sigh.
A little darkness we can surely bear;
Will there not be more sunshine--by and by?

Go, rose, since go you must,
Flowerless and chill the winter draweth nigh;
Closed are the blithe and fragrant lips which made
All summer long perpetual melody.
Cheerless we take our way, but not afraid:
Will there not be more roses--by and by?

Go, love, since go you must,
Out of our pain we bless you as you fly;
The momentary heaven the rainbow lit
Was worth whole days of black and stormy sky;
Shall we not see, as by the waves we sit,
Your bright sail winging shoreward--by and by?

Go, life, since go ...

Only the footprints of the partridge run
Over the billowy drifts on the mountain-side;
And now on level wings the brown birds glide
Following the snowy curves, and in the sun
Bright birds of gold above the stainless white
They move, and as the pale blue shadows move,
With them my heart glides on in golden flight
Over the hills of quiet to my love.

Storm-shaken, racked with terror through the long
Tempestuous night, in the quiet blue of morn
Love drinks the crystal airs, and peace newborn
Within his troubled heart, on wings aglow
Soars into rapture, as from the quiet snow
The golden birds; and out of silence, song.

    I.

    A gentle wind, of western birth
    On some far summer sea,
    Wakes daisies in the wintry earth,
    Wakes hopes in wintry me.

    The sun is low; the paths are wet,
    And dance with frolic hail;
    The trees--their spring-time is not yet--
    Swing sighing in the gale.

    Young gleams of sunshine peep and play;
    Clouds shoulder in between;
    I scarce believe one coming day
    The earth will all be green.

    The north wind blows, and blasts, and raves,
    And flaps his snowy wing:
    Back! toss thy bergs on arctic waves;
    Thou canst not bar our spring.


    II.

    Up comes the primrose, wondering;
    The snowdrop droopeth by;
    The holy spirit of the spring
    ...

I saw sweet Poetry turn troubled eyes
On shaggy Science nosing in the grass,
For by that way poor Poetry must pass
On her long pilgrimage to Paradise.
He snuffled, grunted, squealed; perplexed by flies,
Parched, weatherworn, and near of sight, alas,
From peering close where very little was
In dens secluded from the open skies.

But Poetry in bravery went down,
And called his name, soft, clear, and fearlessly;
Stooped low, and stroked his muzzle overgrown;
Refreshed his drought with dew; wiped pure and free
His eyes: and lo! laughed loud for joy to see
In those grey deeps the azure of her own.

When winter's pulse seems dead beneath the snow,
    And has no throb to give,
Warm your cold heart at mine, beloved, and so
    Shall your heart live.

For mine is fire - a furnace strong and red;
    Look up into my eyes,
There shall you see a flame to make the dead
    Take life and rise.

My eyes are brown, and yours are still and grey,
    Still as the frostbound lake
Whose depths are sleeping in the icy sway,
    And will not wake.

Soundless they are below the leaden sky,
    Bound with that silent chain;
Yet chains may fall, and those that fettered lie
    May live again.

Yes, turn away, grey eyes, you dare not face
    In mine the flame of life;
When frost meets fire, 'tis but a little space
    That ends the strife...

It struck me every day
The lightning was as new
As if the cloud that instant slit
And let the fire through.

It burned me in the night,
It blistered in my dream;
It sickened fresh upon my sight
With every morning's beam.

I thought that storm was brief, --
The maddest, quickest by;
But Nature lost the date of this,
And left it in the sky.

Thou comest, Autumn, heralded by the rain,
    With banners, by great gales incessant fanned,
    Brighter than brightest silks of Samarcand,
    And stately oxen harnessed to thy wain!
Thou standest, like imperial Charlemagne,
    Upon thy bridge of gold; thy royal hand
    Outstretched with benedictions o'er the land,
    Blessing the farms through all thy vast domain!
Thy shield is the red harvest moon, suspended
    So long beneath the heaven's o'er-hanging eaves;
    Thy steps are by the farmer's prayers attended;
Like flames upon an altar shine the sheaves;
    And, following thee, in thy ovation splendid,
    Thine almoner, the wind, scatters the golden leaves!

The wind is rising and the leaves are swept
Wildly before it, hundreds on hundreds fall
Huddling beneath the trees. With brag and brawl
Of storm the day is grown a tavern, kept
Of madness, where, with mantles torn and ripped
Of flying leaves that beat above it all,
The wild winds fight; and, like some half-spent ball,
The acorn stings the rout; and, silver-stripped,
The milkweed-pod winks an exhausted lamp:
Now, in his coat of tatters dark that streams,
The ragged rain sweeps stormily this way,
With all his clamorous followers clouds that camp
Around the hearthstone of the west where gleams
The last chill flame of the expiring day.