And his eyes as the dawn grew bright,

And his lips waxed ruddy as light:

Sorrow may reign for a night,

But day shall bring back delight.

XA VISION OF SPRING IN WINTER.

I.

O TENDER time that love thinks long to see,

Sweet foot of spring that with her footfall sows

Late snowlike flowery leavings of the snows,

Be not too long irresolute to be;

O mother-month, where have they hidden thee?
Out of the pale time of the flowerless rose

I reach my heart out toward the springtime lands.

I stretch my spirit forth to the fair hours,

The purplest of the prime ;

I lean my soul down over them, with hands

Made wide to take the ghostly growths of flowers;

I send my love back to the lovely time.

II.

Where has the greenwood hid thy gracious head?

Veiled with what visions while the grey world grieves,

Or muffled with what shadows of green leaves,

What warm intangible green shadows spread

To sweeten the sweet twilight for thy bed?

What sleep enchants thee? what delight deceives?

Where the deep dreamlike dew before the dawn

Feels not the fingers of the sunlight yet

Its silver web unweave,

Thy footless ghost on some unfooted lawn

Whose air the unrisen sunbeams fear to fret

Lives a ghost's life of daylong dawn and eve.

III.

Sunrise it sees not, neither set of star,

Large nightfall, nor imperial plenilune,

Nor strong sweet shape of the full-breasted noon;

But where the silver-sandalled shadows are,

Too soft for arrows of the sun to mar,

Moves with the mild gait of an ungrown moon:

Hard overhead the half-lit crescent swims,

The tender-coloured night draws hardly breath,

The light is listening;

They watch the dawn of slender-shapen limbs,
Virginal, born again of doubtful death,

Chill foster-father of the weanling spring.

IV.

As sweet desire of day before the day,

As dreams of love before the true love born,

From the outer edge of winter overworn The ghost arisen of May before the May Takes through dim air her unawakened way,

The gracious ghost of morning risen ere morn. With little unblown breasts and child-eyed looks

Following, the very maid, the girl-child spring,

Lifts windward her bright brows,

Dips her light feet in warm and moving brooks,

And kindles with her own mouth's colouring

The fearful firstlings of the plumeless boughs.

V.

I seek thee sleeping, and awhile I see,

Fair face that art not, how thy maiden breath Shall put at last the deadly days to death And fill the fields and fire the woods with thee And seaward hollows where my feet would be

When heaven shall hear the word that April saith

To change the cold heart of the weary time,

To stir and soften all the time to tears,

Tears joyfuller than mirth;

As even to May's clear height the young days climb
With feet not swifter than those fair first years

Whose flowers revive not with thy flowers on earth.

VI.

I would not bid thee, though I might, give back

One good thing youth has given and borne away;

I crave not any comfort of the day