WELCOME, rippling sunshine!
Welcome, joyous air!
Like a demon shadow
Flies the gaunt despair!
Heaven, through heights of happy calm,
Its heart of hearts uncloses,
To win earth's answering love in balm,
Her blushing thanks--in roses!
Voices from the pine-grove,
Where the pheasant's drumming,
Voices front the ferny hills
Alive with insect humming;
Voices low and sweet
From the far-off stream,
Where two rivulets meet
With the murmur of a dream;
Voices loud and free
Front every bush and tree,
Of sportive forest bards outpouring songs of gladness;
But over them still
With its passionate trill,
The mock-bird's jocund madness!
Deep down the swampy brake
Even the poison-snake,
Uncoiled and basking in the noontide splendor,
May feel, perchance on this auspicious day
(All dark clouds rolled away),
Through his stagnant blood,
Warmed by the sunlight flood
A faint, far sense,
Coming he knows not whence,
Of dim intelligence,--
The thinnest conscious thrill that human is, and tender!
Look! where on luminous wing
The ether's stately king,
The lone sea-eagle, circling proud and slow,
Towers in the sapphire glow;
From out whose dazzling beam,
His resonant scream;
Heard even here,--a note of fierce desire,--
Hushes to silent awe the sylvan choir,
Till bird and note in airy deeps updrawn
Are melting toward the dawn!
And hear! O! hear!
No longer wildly terrible and drear,
But as if merry pulses timed their beating,
The frolic sea-waves near,
Dancing along like happy maidens playing
When blithe love goes " a-Maying,"
And wreaking on the shore their panting blisses
In coy impulsive kisses;
Whilst he--poor dullard--cannot catch nor hold them,
Nor in his massive, earthen arms enfold them,
The laughing virgin waves, so archly, swiftly fleeting!
This subtle atmosphere,
So magically clear,
Melts, as it were upon my eager lip;
From some invisible goblet of delight
Idly I sip and sip
A wine so warm and golden
(From some enchanted bin the wine was stolen),
A wine so sweet and rare,
Methinks a nobler birth
Illuminates the earth,
And in my heart I hear a fairy singing;
Yet well I know 'tis but my soul renewed,
Reborn and bright,
From grief and grief's malignant solitude!
Yet well I know, Joy is the Ganymede,
Who in my yearning need,
Turns to a cordial rich the balmy air;
And 'tis but Hope's, divinest Hope's return,
Which makes my inmost spirit throb and burn,
And Hope's triumphant song,
So sweet and strong,
That all creation seems with that weird music ringing!
