In the Spring Fields
There dwells a spirit in the budding year—
As motherhood doth beautify the face—
That even lends these barren glebes a grace,
And fills gray hours with beauty that were drear
And bleak when the loud, storming March was here:
A glamour that the thrilled heart dimly traces
In swelling boughs and soft, wet, windy spaces,
And sunlands where the chattering birds make cheer.
I thread the uplands where the wind’s footfalls
Stir leaves in gusty hollows, autumn’s urns.
Seaward the river’s shining breast expands,
High in the windy pines a lone crow calls,
And far below some patient ploughman turns
His great black furrow over steaming lands.
The Dryad
Her soul was sown with the seed of the tree
Of old when the earth was young,
And glad with the light of its majesty
The light of her beautiful being upgrew.
And the winds that swept over land and sea,
And like a harper the great boughs strung,
Whispered her all things new.
The tree reached forth to the sun and the wind
And towered to heaven above.
But she was the soul that under its rind
Whispered its joy through the whole wood’s span,
Sweet and glad and tender and kind;
For her love for the tree was a holier love
Than the love of woman for man.
The seasons came and the seasons went
And the woodland music rang;
And under her wide umbrageous tent,
Hidden forever from mortal eye,
She sang earth’s beauty and wonderment.
But men never knew the spirit that sang
This music too wondrous to die.