THE CRAB-TREE
SPRING comes anew, and brings each little pledge
That still, as wont, my childish heart deceives;
I stoop again for violets in the hedge,
Among the ivy and old withered leaves;
And often mark, amid the clumps of sedge,
The pooty-shells I gathered when a boy:
But cares have claimed me many an evil day,
And chilled the relish which I had for joy.
Yet when Crab-blossoms blush among the May,
As erst in years gone by, I scramble now
Up ’mid the bramble for my old esteems,
Filling my hands with many a blooming bough;
Till the heart-stirring past as present seems,
Save the bright sunshine of those fairy dreams.
WINTER
OLD January, clad in crispy rime,
Comes limping on, and often makes a stand;
The hasty snow-storm ne’er disturbs his time,
He mends no pace, but beats his dithering hand.
And February, like a timid maid,
Smiling and sorrowing follows in his train;
Huddled in cloak, of miry roads afraid,
She hastens on to meet her home again.
Then March, the prophetess, by storms inspired,
Gazes in rapture on the troubled sky,
And now in headlong fury madly fired,
She bids the hail-storm boil and hurry by.
Yet ’neath the blackest cloud, a Sunbeam flings
Its cheering promise of returning Springs.
OLD POESY
SWEET is the poesy of the olden time,
In the unsullied infancy of rhyme,
When Nature reigned omnipotent to teach,
And Truth and Feeling owned the powers of speech.
Rich is the music of each early theme,
And sweet as sunshine in a summer dream,
Giving to stocks and stones, in rapture’s strife,
A soul of utterance and a tongue of life.
Sweet are these wild flowers in their disarray,
Which Art and Fashion fling as weeds away,
To sport with shadows of inferior kind,
Mere magic-lanthorns of the shifting mind,
Automatons of wonder-working powers,
Shadows of life, and artificial flowers.