Why should I weep for Autumn rain?
Give gusty Winter toll of tears?
I know that Spring will come again,
As in the other years.
And there is pleasure in wet ways.
In frozen fields, and mist-strange days;
What were eternal Spring to me.
Whose joy is in diversity!
My house is damp as damp can be,
It stands on London clay.
And if I move unthinkingly
It shakes in a most alarming way.
Mayhap it will all come down on me
One day.
But through the window I can see
The most enchanting apple-tree.
In spring-time, there are daffodils
And primroses on little hills,
And high within my apple-tree
A blackbird comes and sings to me;
On the black branch he sits and sings
Of birds and nests and eggs and things.
I can't remember, as I hear,
That old grey London lies so near.
O SPRING of my Content,
The parching days are spent.
Where'er your feeding waters move
There is the sweet increase of love.
I, wanderer in a wilderness
Starved of all hope and comfortless,
Now lay me down in groves of cool delight
Which you have nurtured, in a charmed night.
When the green lies over the earth, my dear,
A mantle of witching grace,
When the smile and the tear of the young child year
Dimple across its face,
And then flee, when the wind all day is sweet
With the breath of growing things,
When the wooing bird lights on restless feet
And chirrups and trills and sings
To his lady-love
In the green above,
Then oh! my dear, when the youth’s in the year,
Yours is the face that I long to have near,
Yours is the face, my dear.
But the green is hiding your curls, my dear,
Your curls so shining and sweet;
And the gold-hearted daisies this many a year
Hey! My daffodil-crowned,
Slim and without sandals!
As the sudden spurt of flame upon darkness
So my eyeballs are startled with you,
Supple-limbed youth among the fruit-trees,
Light runner through tasselled orchards.
You are an almond flower unsheathed
Leaping and flickering between the budded branches.
The scent of hyacinths, like a pale mist, lies between me and my book ;
And the South Wind, washing through the room,
Makes the candles quiver.
My nerves sting at a spatter of rain on the shutter.
And I am uneasy with the thrusting of green shoots
Outside, in the night.
Why are you not here to overpower me with your tense and urgent love ?
The South wind blows open the folds of my dress.
My feet leave wet tracks in the earth of my garden.
The willows along the canal sing with new leaves turned upon the wind.
I walk along the tow-path
Gazing at the level water.
Should I see a ribbed edge
Running upon its clearness,
I should know that this was caused
By the prow of the boat
In which you are to return.
What fell upon my open umbrella —
A plum-blossom ?
Through the Spring-thickened branches
I see it floating.
An ivory dome
Headed to gold by the dim sun.
It hangs against a white-misted sky.
And the swollen branches
Open or cover it,
As they blow in the wet wind.
I do not know which is worse when you are away:
Long grey days with the lisping sound of the rain
And then when the lilac dusk is beginning to fall
The thought that perhaps you may never come back again ;
Or days when the world is a shimmer of blue and gold,
Sparkling newly all in the dear spring weather,
When with a heart that is torn apart by pain
I walk alone in ways that we went together.
I had no thought of violets of late,
The wild, shy kind that spring beneath your feet
In wistful April days, when lovers mate
And wander through the fields in raptures sweet.
The thought of violets meant florists’ shops,
And bows and pins, and perfumed papers fine;
And garish lights, and mincing little fops
And cabarets and songs, and deadening wine.
So far from sweet real things my thoughts had strayed,
I had forgot wide fields, and clear brown streams;
The perfect loveliness that God has made,--
Wild violets shy and Heaven-mounting dreams.
And now--unwittingly, you’ve made me dream
Of violets, and my soul’s forgotten gleam.
From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April, dress'd in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing,
That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him.
Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odour and in hue,
Could make me any summer's story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew:
Nor did I wonder at the lily's white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
Yet seem'd it winter still, and you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play.