Though the branches are bare and the cold earth is sleeping!”
With a dee, dee, dee! the sprite seemed to say,
“I’m friends with the Maytime as well as December,
And I’ll meet you here on a fair-weather day;
Here, in the green-brier thicket,—remember!”
* * * * * *
I came to the woods in the spring of the year,
And I followed a voice that was most entreating:
Phebe! Phebe! (and yet more near),
Phebe! Phebe! it kept repeating!