When songs of love were all unknown,
Ere earth had into beauty grown,
Ere rippling brook and soughing pine
Had turned her prose hills into rhyme;
When all was dark, and cold, and bare,
Thou hadst, perhaps, a mission there;
And that is why, ’neath spring-time snows
Thy curious spathe so early grows.
Hast thou no mission now, strange flower,
Happier to make spring’s early hour?