Poems and Ballads (Third Series) | Page 3

with revel and
ravin and spoil of the snow,?And the branches it brightened are broken, and shattered the
tree-tops that only thy wrath could lay low,?How should not thy lovers rejoice in thee, leader and lord of the
year that exults to be born?So strong in thy strength and so glad of thy gladness whose
laughter puts winter and sorrow to scorn??Thou hast shaken the snows from thy wings, and the frost on thy
forehead is molten: thy lips are aglow?As a lover's that kindle with kissing, and earth, with her raiment
and tresses yet wasted and torn,?Takes breath as she smiles in the grasp of thy passion to feel
through her spirit the sense of thee flow.
III
Fain, fain would we see but again for an hour what the wind and the
sun have dispelled and consumed,?Those full deep swan-soft feathers of snow with whose luminous
burden the branches implumed?Hung heavily, curved as a half-bent bow, and fledged not as birds
are, but petalled as flowers,?Each tree-top and branchlet a pinnacle jewelled and carved, or a
fountain that shines as it showers,?But fixed as a fountain is fixed not, and wrought not to last till
by time or by tempest entombed,?As a pinnacle carven and gilded of men: for the date of its doom is
no more than an hour's,?One hour of the sun's when the warm wind wakes him to wither the
snow-flowers that froze as they bloomed.
IV
As the sunshine quenches the snowshine; as April subdues thee, and
yields up his kingdom to May;?So time overcomes the regret that is born of delight as it passes
in passion away,?And leaves but a dream for desire to rejoice in or mourn for with
tears or thanksgivings; but thou,?Bright god that art gone from us, maddest and gladdest of months,
to what goal hast thou gone from us now??For somewhere surely the storm of thy laughter that lightens, the
beat of thy wings that play,?Must flame as a fire through the world, and the heavens that we
know not rejoice in thee: surely thy brow?Hath lost not its radiance of empire, thy spirit the joy that
impelled it on quest as for prey.
V
Are thy feet on the ways of the limitless waters, thy wings on the
winds of the waste north sea??Are the fires of the false north dawn over heavens where summer is
stormful and strong like thee?Now bright in the sight of thine eyes? are the bastions of icebergs
assailed by the blast of thy breath??Is it March with the wild north world when April is waning? the
word that the changed year saith,?Is it echoed to northward with rapture of passion reiterate from
spirits triumphant as we?Whose hearts were uplift at the blast of thy clarions as men's
rearisen from a sleep that was death?And kindled to life that was one with the world's and with thine?
hast thou set not the whole world free?
VI
For the breath of thy lips is freedom, and freedom's the sense of
thy spirit, the sound of thy song,?Glad god of the north-east wind, whose heart is as high as the
hands of thy kingdom are strong,?Thy kingdom whose empire is terror and joy, twin-featured and
fruitful of births divine,?Days lit with the flame of the lamps of the flowers, and nights
that are drunken with dew for wine,?And sleep not for joy of the stars that deepen and quicken, a
denser and fierier throng,?And the world that thy breath bade whiten and tremble rejoices at
heart as they strengthen and shine,?And earth gives thanks for the glory bequeathed her, and knows of
thy reign that it wrought not wrong.
VII
Thy spirit is quenched not, albeit we behold not thy face in the
crown of the steep sky's arch,?And the bold first buds of the whin wax golden, and witness arise
of the thorn and the larch:?Wild April, enkindled to laughter and storm by the kiss of the
wildest of winds that blow,?Calls loud on his brother for witness; his hands that were laden
with blossom are sprinkled with snow,?And his lips breathe winter, and laugh, and relent; and the live
woods feel not the frost's flame parch;?For the flame of the spring that consumes not but quickens is felt
at the heart of the forest aglow,?And the sparks that enkindled and fed it were strewn from the hands
of the gods of the winds of March.
THE COMMONWEAL
1887
I
Eight hundred years and twenty-one?Have shone and sunken since the land?Whose name is freedom bore such brand?As marks a captive, and the sun?Beheld her fettered hand.
II
But ere dark time had shed as rain?Or sown on sterile earth as seed?That bears no fruit save tare and weed?An age and half an age again,?She rose on Runnymede.
III
Out of the shadow, starlike still,?She rose up radiant in her right,?And spake, and put to fear and flight?The lawless rule of awless will?That pleads no right save might.
IV
Nor since hath England ever borne?The burden laid on subject lands,?The rule that curbs and binds all hands?Save one, and marks for servile scorn?The heads it bows