All Round the Year

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Title: All Round the Year
Author: Edith Nesbit
Saretta Nesbit (AKA Caris Brooke)
Illustrator: Hugh Bellingham-Smith
Release Date: January 20, 2007 [EBook #20404]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
? START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALL ROUND THE YEAR ***
Produced by Louise Hope, David Edwards, Marilynda?Fraser-Cunliffe and the Online Distributed Proofreading?Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from?images generously made available by the International?Children's Digital Library at?http://www.childrenslibrary.org)
[Illustrated text:
ALL ROUND?THE YEAR]
[Illustration]
[Illustrated text:
ALL ROUND?THE YEAR
By?E. NESBIT?and?CARIS BROOKE.
Drawings by?H. BELLINGHAM SMITH?and others.
LONDON: von PORTHEIM & Co.?Paternoster Row E.C.
Printed in Germany]
All round the year the changing suns and rains?Beat on men's work--to wreck and to decay--?But nature builds more perfectly than they,?Her changing unchanged sea resists, remains.
All round the year new flowers spring up to shew?How gloriously life is more strong than death;?And in our hearts are seeds of love and faith,?Ah, sun and showers, be kind, and let them grow.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
RESURGAM.
Swift pass the hours, or lengthened by our hearts?Uncertain measurement of time,?And when we dream the year has just awoke,?We wake to find her in her prime.
We sadden with the dying Autumn leaves,?Yet falling seeds their promise bring;?Through long dark Winter days we only wait?A resurrection in the coming Spring.
Within each hour the precious minutes lie?Like seeds awaiting Spring's first breath,?God's harvest-time shall show us if they bear?The flowers of life or death.
_Caris Brooke._
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
Cold is the earth, the flowers below,?Fearful of Winter's hand, lie curled;?But Spring will come again you know,?And glorify the world.
[Illustration]
Dark is the night, no stars or moon;?But at its blackest night is done;?All after hastens to the noon,?The triumph of the sun!
And life is short, and love is brief--?Be patient! There will be--they say?New life, divine beyond belief,?Somewhere, somehow, some day!
_E. Nesbit._
[Illustration]
MARCH VIOLETS.
This busy, dusty wind that blows?Along the cruel streets,?Right to the heart of violets goes,?And robs them of their sweets.?And as along the cruel street?The keen wind robs the flowers,?So the cold kindness that we meet?Blights these poor hearts of ours.
But if you tend with warmth, you know,?Your violets, they give?Sweet scent again, as if to show?How glad they are to live.?We think if some one loved us too?Our hearts would break to prove?By all that we could say or do,?How glad we were to love!
_E. Nesbit._
[Illustration]
Dream footsteps wandering past us in our sleep,?A restless presence stirring with the light,?The cry of waters where the snow was white,?A violet's whisper where dead leaves lay deep;?The dim wood's music makes a sudden leap,?Broken notes, blending in a wild delight,?And lo! the whole world changes in our sight.?Promise is ended--we must turn and reap?Fulfilment, for the Spring with all her wealth?Is with us, and compels us to her will.?Yet if the sun-dawn we should shun by stealth?Yearning for shadows and the darkened hours,?Sweet Lord, be pitiful, remembering still?One lieth low beneath the budding flowers.
_Caris Brooke._
[Illustration]
Never a hand on the cottage door?To call me forth in the evening light,?My days grow old, and I watch no more?The cowslips gold and the may-buds white.?Primroses nestle beneath the hedge?Where we kissed and wept and said good-bye--?For twenty years I have watched them bud,?For twenty years I have seen them die.
Yet now that the Spring once more has turned?The sea to silver, the earth to gold,?I shall watch no more from the primrose lane,?Where I waited and watched in the days of old.?Yet the children weave me their daisy chains,?The woodland music is sweet and clear,?Though the footsteps have wandered beyond recall,?That I watched and waited so long to hear!
_Caris Brooke._
[Illustration]
The swans along the water glide,?Unfettered and yet side by side--?So should true lovers ever be,?Together ever--ever free.
A chain upon the white swan's neck,?What were it good for--save to break??And swans who wear and break a chain?Swim never side by side again.
[Illustration]
My best beloved, the Spring is fair,?The woods are green and life is good,?Come out with me and let us tread?By field and fold and sweet wet wood--?The wind-flower blanches all the copse,?With hyacinth the hedge is blue,?And every wakened leaf is fair,?But not so fair as you!
The black-birds sing on hazel boughs?Beneath the overarching trees,?The cuckoo's distant song is borne?Across the meadow by the breeze,?The thrush's song is sweetest far?But saddens as the hours go by.?You hear? The nightingale's in love,?But not so much as I!
_E. Nesbit._
[Illustration]
Girdled with gold my little lady's bower?Stands at the portals of a world in flower,?And down her ways the changing blossoms mark?How the Spring grows each day from dawn to dark.
[Illustration]
When forth she moves, her dainty foot