The brake is brimmed with linnet song;
Clear carols flutter through the trees;
For me heart's winter is life-long;
I cast my sighs on every breeze.
Clear carols flutter through the trees;
The new year hovers like a dove:
I cast my sighs on every breeze;
Spring is no spring, forlorn of love.
The new year hovers like a dove
Above the breast of the green earth:
Spring is no spring, forlorn of love;
Alike to me are death and birth.
Above the breast of the green earth
The soft sky flutters like a flower:
Alike to me are death and birth;
I dig Love's grave in every hour.
The soft sky flutters like a flower
Along the glory of the hills:
I dig Love's grave in every hour,
I hear Love's dirge in all the rills.
Along the glory of the hills
Flowers slope into a rim of gold:
I hear Love's dirge in all the rills;
Sad singings haunt me as of old.
Flowers slope into a rim of gold
Along the marges of the sky:
Sad singings haunt me as of old;
Shall Love come back to me to die?
Along the marges of the sky
The birds wing homeward from the East:
Shall Love come back to me to die?
Shall Hope relive, once having ceas'd?
The birds wing homeward from the East;
I smell spice-breaths upon the air:
Shall Hope relive, once having ceas'd?
It would lie black on my despair.
I smell spice-breaths upon the air;
The golden Orient savours pass:
Hope would lie black on my despair,
Like a moon-shadow on the grass.