IN EARLY SPRING.

[ZaunköniG]

IN EARLY SPRING.

THE delicate wind, clear light of the warm sun !
Surely I know how subtly sweet is Spring,
The earth and man's worn heart revisiting ;
I would not have thy brief existence done.
And yet I would, Oh new-born Spring, that one
Might meet thine eyes without there mirroring
The ghost of many a sweet and bitter thing,
Old dreads, old hopes too frail to lean upon.
Oh last descended of a hostile race,
Though in thyself so sweet and softly fair,
Within thine eyes ancestral springs I trace ;
So some wronged woman in her baby's face
May shuddering see its father's likeness there,
While parted raptures thrill through her despair.