The First of March.
The bud is in the bough
And the leaf is in the bud,
And Earth’s beginning now
In her veins to feel the blood,
Which, warm’d by summer’s sun
In th’ alembic of the vine,
From her founts will overrun
In a ruddy gush of wine.
The perfume and the bloom
That shall decorate the flower,
Are quickening in the gloom
Of their subterranean bower;
And the juices meant to feed
Trees, vegetables, fruits,
Unerringly proceed
To their preappointed roots.
How awful the thought
Of the wonders under ground,
Of the mystic changes wrought
In the silent, dark profound;
How each thing upwards tends
By necessity decreed,
And a world’s support depends
On the shooting of a seed!
The Summer’s in her ark,
And this sunny-pinion’d day
Is commission’d to remark
Whether Winter holds her sway;
Go back, thou dove of peace,
With the myrtle on thy wing,
Say that floods and tempests cease,
And the world is ripe for Spring.
Thou hast fann’d the sleeping Earth
Till her dreams are all of flowers,
And the waters look in mirth
For their overhanging bowers;
The forest seems to listen
For the rustle of its leaves,
And the very skies to glisten
In the hope of summer eves.
Thy vivifying spell
Has been felt beneath the wave,
By the dormouse in its cell,
And the mole within its cave;
And the summer tribes that creep,
Or in air expand their wing,
Have started from their sleep,
At the summons of the Spring.
The cattle lift their voices
From the valleys and the hills,
And the feather’d race rejoices
With a gush of tuneful bills;
And if this cloudless arch
Fills the poet’s song with glee,
O thou sunny first of March,
Be it dedicate to thee!
This beautiful poem has afforded me exquisite gratification. Till I saw it printed in Mr. Dyce’s “Specimens of British Poetesses,” I was ignorant that a living lady had written so delightfully. Without a friend at my elbow to instruct me whether I should prefix “Miss” or “Mrs.” to her felicitous name, I transcribe—as I find it in Mr. Dyce’s volume—Felicia Hemans.