THE Spring, so fair in her voting incompleteness,
Of late the very type of tender sweetness;
Now, through frail leaves and misty branches brown,
Looks forth, the dreary shadow of a frown
Chasing the frank smile from her innocent face;
What marvel this? for the East Wind's disgrace
Smites, like a buffet, April's tingling cheek,
Whence the swift, outraged blood doth ebb to seek
The affrighted heart!
The Earth, herself so gay,
Buoyant, and happy, at the dawn of day,
Thrills, shivering low with every flaw increased,
And fraught with salt-sea coldness from the East!
O masterful wind and cruel! at thy sweep,
From the bold hill-top to the valley-deep,
Surprise and fear through all the woodlands run,
Till the coy it nestling places of the sun
Are ruffled up, from shine to shade, as when
At the first note of storm the moorland hen
Ruffles her wings ere yet their warmth be spread
About each tremulous nestling's dusky head.
On the tall trees the foremost buds, half bare,
Stared, as wild-eyed, on the keen, rasping air;
Then shook--but not with softly-palpitant thrills,
As when, o'erlooking the freed mountain-rills,
They felt their life by loving arms caressed--
Warm, viewless arms of zephyrs of the West--
But with the sense, the cold and shivery stress
Of utter and forlornest nakedness.
The twigs that bore them flattened upward, lost
To all but rigid consciousness of frost;
And their full-foliaged branches which so blindly
Bowed in meek homage when the winds were kindly
Strained upward, too, in stiff, rebellious fashion,
With throes of anguish and deep moans of passion,
Wrung from them by wild beatings of the gale!
Then many a tiny leaf, though waxing pale,
Cloud-shadowed; all unfrayed, yet quivering, shrunk
Behind the mosses of some giant trunk,
To wait till the shrewd tempest hurtling by
Left Spring once more empress of earth and sky--
While many a large leaf, almost riven apart,
Piped a sad dirge from out its fluted heart,
And knowing what sombre selvage must be seen--
Alas, too soon!--to film its glow of green,
Bewailed the hour whose treacherous brightness came
To warm its life-blood into genial flame
Only to send the blissful-flowing tide
Back through the baffled veins unsatisfied,
Its nascent joy nipped by the arctic breath
And merciless waftage of this Wind of Death!
