That thin denuded ghost, the winter sun,
Wrapped in pale melancholy as a shroud.
Crept low through skies of dun,
Till mist-befogged he sank in a red shame ;
Whilst 'neath him bowed
The stricken earth, mute-suffering, the game
Of shouting winds and rattling storm
That battered her still form.
In black boughs sat the huddled birds.
And over yellow fields the gaunt and shaggy herds
Cropped with cold lips, the while their breath
Hung frosted into death.

But one day, lightly wandering.
Came a herald, scattering
Fragrant hope ; he softly bent.
Whispered to the earth and went.

Then came the shining armies of the Spring ;
With tossing banners of green flecked o'er with light.
Singing they came, and in a pell-mell flight
The savage winds fled roaring, and the white
Sad hosts of Winter's marshalling
Swept northward without sound ;
For o'er the desolate ground
The radiant victors marched like flame outspread,
And the world sprang alight with the fire of their passionate tread,
And the great sun burned.
And the earth's heart yearned.
And the old despair in a blaze of longing broke.
And the dead awoke
To blossom in flpwers, and shed
Their fragrance to the wind that went.
Humming of this new wonderment.
From field to field, gathering warm scent.

Sing, sing, sing !
The irons are riven apart
That clamped cold silence like a spell on every
heart;
And now each budding tree
Becomes a green and music-haunted nursery ;
Now honied petals cling,
Blown from their blossoming.
About the wandering feet of lamb and ewe.
That stray through orchard greens and glooms.
Their warm fleece misted o'er with dew.

Now sighs of deep content
Come from sweet mouths that crop the daisied mead
Where sleek and shining herds do feed.
And through a flower-bright world, the horse moves like a king ;
With rippling muscles, and full silken throat.
Sunshine on his glossy coat,
He goes in majesty, as though he ne'er had been
The shaggy hollow thing
That scraped the crusted snow for scraps of green.
As these cold flakes by fires quick melted be.
So from the heart of bird and beast
Falls, heedlessly.
Their cloak of wintry care and narrow penury.
And Earth, in her rich motherhood, does glow and thrill,
Feeding her little ones, who now may take their fill.

Alack, what cry
Breaks the bright air with bitter lamentation ?
Winter is gone, then why should want now stand
Holding up skinny palms with wail of desperation?
Earth hearkens as she bends in happy dreaming
Over her nurslings clustered in green rest.
Where flowers, lamp-like, 'mid the grass are gleaming.
Each little spirit clad in sunny vest;
Yea, bleak upon her joy, man's miseries
She hears, and slowly turns, and sternly cries:

' Again, again ! glad Spring on Spring returns.
And still your clamour rends me as a curse
With senseless cry for food—^is it not here ?
Have ye not hands to take ? Oh, ye perverse,
I bless you not, nor you whose cruel ease
Battens on brother lives in ulcerous disease,
Nor you dull slaves who minister to these,
Who with gnarled limbs toil famished for the bread
Ye may not touch, whose souls lie dead
That these may surfeit liaving fed.

Oh terrible starved faces !
Oh little children fallen from your sweet graces
To blear-eyed frowsy want and pallor thin !
Are these meet weeds to deck your bodies in.
These sweat-stained rags, when other creatures shine
In festal robes of glory and pride that honour life divine ?

Lo, I weep ;—
Oh man that I nursed in ecstasy.
Dreaming that bom of thee
A god should walk my pleasant ways.
How bitter 'tis to sleep.
Wrapped in the light of hope's fair prophecy.
And waking cry for the departed rays !
My dream is but as empty foam.
Drifted by aimless winds from the o'erburdened sea
Across a barren shore.
Where whirls the salted sand, and brown weed dries.
And life can spring no more.

Cease, cease to anger me
With thine insensate, vexed perversity.
Scorning the good that thou may'st see.
Like some spoilt child that will but fret and pout;
Lest,—for my arms are strong,—
I lift thee from the throng,
And gently from thy green home cast thee out:
So shall the divine one be
Born of some simpler creature, not of thee.