Nothing is new, I have seen the spring too often;
There have been other plum-trees white as this one
Like a silvery cloud tethered beside the road,
I have been waked from sleep too many times
By birds at dawn boasting their love is beautiful.
The grass-blades gleam in the wind, nothing is changed.
Nothing is lost, it is all as it used to be,
Unopened lilacs are still as deep a purple,
The boughs of the elm are dancing still in a veil of tiny leaves,
Nothing is lost but a few years from my life.
Dawn glimmers white beyond the burning hill
Where sunbeams light a fire in every tree.
The morning bird is singing clear and shrill;
And oh, my love! when will you come to me?
The daisies whitely sleep beneath the dew;
On the wet road the stones are fair to see;
Cloudy, the blackthorn floats upon the blue;
And oh, my love! when will you come to me?
The wind came walking in the shaken wood;
He shouted from the mountains and the sea.
By the pale thorn he paused, in lover’s mood -
And oh, my love! when will you come to me?
My heart has blossomed meekly as the thorn;
It has its dews, and daisies two or three.
The heavens quicken, green as April corn —
And oh, my love! when will you come to me?
Soon amid the inviolable places
Will green, rustling steeples chime again
With the sweet, glassy bell-notes of the wren.
Soon the plain shall lie beneath blue spaces —
Bold and broad and ruddy in the sun,
Long and lean to the moon when day is done.
Soon will come the strange, heart-lifting season
When through the dark, still dawns, where nothing was,
Steals the mysterious whisper of growing grass;
And a joy like pain possesses the soul, without reason,
Between the budding of day and the lapse of night,
With the clear, cold scent of wet starlight.
Silver-haired Marquise!
You were transplanted, one Spring,
Into wild New France.
There is music in the strong
Deep-throated bush,
Whisperings of song
Heard in the leaves' hush--
Ballads of the trees
In tongues unknown--
A reminiscent tone
On minor keys...
Boughs swaying to and fro
Though no winds pass...
Faint odors in the grass
Where no flowers grow,
And flutterings of wings
And faint first notes,
Once babbled on the boughs
Of faded springs.
Blow through me wind
As you blow through apple blossoms....
Scatter me in shining petals over the passers-by....
Joyously I reunite... sway and gather to myself....
Sedately I walk by the dancing feet of children--
Not knowing I too dance over the cobbled spring.
O, but they laugh back at me,
(Eyes like daisies smiling wide open),
And we both look askance at the snowed-in people
Thinking me one of them.
Let all the towns remember you.
And tell it out with mellow tongue,
Down April yards at fall of dew —
That you were fair, that you were young.
A wind at dusk shaken to and fro
Against a melon-colored pane;
White flags in a brief, wistful row;
An only star after a rain.
But let this secret keep unsung;
Nor wise nor fool must it divine,
And tell it out with April tongue —
That all this loveliness was mine !
She was a wild plum flower,
As fair as that fair thing;
A breathless blowing hers,
As it were the last spring.
Not anything to her
A spire with stars for fold;
A rose though but the one;
Or a sack full of gold.
We could not make her care
For sheep bells coming home;
For yarrow in a field;
For gilded frock or comb.
Once, like a wild plum flower.
She strewed her leaves to night,
All her white loneliness
In a moment gone from sight.
Oh, let me run and hide,
Let me run straight to God;
The weather is so mad with white
From sky down to the clod !
If but one thing were so.
Lilac, or thorn out there,
It would not be, indeed.
So hard to bear.
The weather has gone mad with white;
The cloud, the highway touch;
White lilac is enough;
White thorn too much !
Old women think of old roofs, and the things
That made these comely in the ancient sun ;
Old men think of their wars, their wayfarings done.
Both of first love; of fair, dispersed springs.
Old women and old men — God rest them all! —
To hear the dark, slow waters lap about;
To see their last of candle spluttering out; —
It is too poor an ending to befall.
But ours this golden earth from sky to sky ;
And all my thoughts of you, and yours of me;
About us memorable April set. —
Sudden I feel the fleet years tumbling by;
Age stares at me behind each rosy tree! —
Oh, snatch me to your heart ! I would forget.
The great ghosts of the town
Up and down,
Each a gray, filmy thing,
Go by.
Sudden a brief, wet sky! —
A file of poplars vague with spring.
Drips the old garden there;
See, its torn edge about,
Scarlet, remote,
Tulips flare,
The length of one thin note! —
And are put out.
Oh, I would sing! Oh, I would cry!
Oh, I would lay me down and die !
There is no lovely or strange thing
I would not do this day in spring.
Why go the sighing winds unfurled?
To blow me to the end of world.
Why bud the flowers, except that I
May pelt the stars out of the sky?
Why drips the rain its ancient way ?
To blot out every yesterday,
And gather time to this one hour,
My golden thoughts its only dower.
Why curves the pool out in the grass?
To make for me a looking-glass,
Where I may see how glad a thing
A girl in love this day in spring!