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’Tis the time o’ the year in early light and glad,
The lark has a music to drive a lover mad;
The downs are dripping nightly, the breathéd damps arise,
Deliciously the freshets cool the grayling’s golden eyes,
And lying in a row against the chilly North, the sheep
Inclose a place without a wind for tender lambs to sleep.
The out-of-door atmosphere which Miss Guiney has managed to infuse into these lines is fairly palpable. What sense of moisture in the dew-heavy air is in the second stanza, and what elation and buoyancy of returning life vitalizes the first! While on this phase of her work there is another poem as magnetically charged, and full of ozone, but its objective side incidental to a subjective query which nature and science force to the lips:
The spur is red upon the briar,
The sea-kelp whips the wave ashore;