[Lyric] Lyra Vernalis (Arthur Johnson (Poet))

Oft have I seen you, lovely as of old
Though Winter still forbade your birds to sing
Steal by the silent houses barred to cold
Around a sunlit corner vanishing
With hooded face and mantle grey, few know
How in these peopled days you pass
With hesitant comings, hastenings away
Through every street, by every stretch of grass
From wood to distant wood, where'er you go
To gaze upon some frozen spot
And bid the frost depart
Of many a gentle thing to feel the heart
Judging the days before that pulse shall leap
Fresh out of sleep
Sudden awake
To glow and merrymake
In tune with the gay measure of its lot

So have I waited long today, for sure
This happy sun, this wealth of southern air
This desolation made by sleep more pure
This emptiness, will tempt you forth to fare
And earth will wake once more
Now is the first sweet respite of the year
Too long, too long have you been stranger here
Too long you tarry now -- so soon before
New storms with freshened force will rage
O Spring, what keeps you now!
When every tree, when every naked bough
Needs your assurance, when all spent things wait
In fear which but your coming would assuage
Spring, Spring -- be not too late!
The trodden soil conceals no trace of you
Whose footprint I could tell in any place
And yet, methought that maid with raiment blue
Who fled so fast, had a familiar face
Some look of youth the Winter failed to heed
Perhaps; and now yon sapling is more green.
What laughter is it, from what source unseen
Came that low mocking shout? Behold a steed
Leaps as if happy to be driven
Along the winged way!
Oh, am I mad or did his driver gay
Lean from that dirty cart to wave farewell
A finger on her lips as warning given
Lest I her secret tell?
Across wet meadows where the wild thyme sleeps
Where lonely pools are forming in the sedge
I fain would track you past the ice-hung steeps
Along the sinuous river's melting edge
To where alone there is a little hollow
A slender streamlet trickles from the ground
And stooping over it you gaze around
To see what charmed thing perchance may follow
There kneeling on the early mud
At last, O Spring, at last
Would I might come upon you silently!
My arm about your shivering shoulders passed
My hand beneath the head thrown back for me!
For me the breast a-flower in every bud
The eyes of ecstasy!

Why must you journey in such desperate haste
Without another curious glance behind?
There is a promise in this barren waste
And from that southern way you went the wind
Brings an old fragrance back to things bereft
Of all old fragrances. Alas, too soon
Fall the long shadows of the afternoon
With fingers deft
Dusk lights the stars in heaven's pale gulf of blue
Where, where are you
Who should on earth make the sky's vision true?
Now, even, have you sought that couch you left
Where, when clouds ominously rise
Dreaming, you may forget
How late will bloom the timid violet?
Or on some quiet height, perhaps, you stand
To view afar, with passion-laden eyes
The desolated land