MAY-DAY

DAUGHTER of Heaven and Earth, coy Spring, With sudden passion languishing,

Teaching barren moors to smile,

Painting pictures mile on mile,

Holds a cup with cowslip-wreaths,

Whence a smokeless incense breathes.'
The air is full of whistlings bland;
What was that I heard

Out of the hazy land?

Harp of the wind, or song of bird,2
Or vagrant booming of the air,
Voice of a meteor lost in day?
Such tidings of the starry sphere
Can this elastic air convey.
Or haply 't was the cannonade
Of the pent and darkened lake,
Cooled by the pendent mountain's shade,
Whose deeps, till beams of noonday break,
Afflicted moan, and latest hold
Even into May the iceberg cold.
Was it a squirrel's pettish bark,
Or clarionet of jay? or hark

Where yon wedged line the Nestor leads,
Steering north with raucous cry
Through tracts and provinces of sky,
Every night alighting down

In new landscapes of romance,
Where darkling feed the clamorous clans
By lonely lakes to men unknown.
Come the tumult whence it will,
Voice of sport, or rush of wings,
It is a sound, it is a token

That the marble sleep is broken,
And a change has passed on things.

When late I walked, in earlier days, All was stiff and stark;

Knee-deep snows choked all the ways,
In the sky no spark;

Firm-braced I sought my ancient woods,
Struggling through the drifted roads;
The whited desert knew me not,
Snow-ridges masked each darling spot;
The summer dells, by genius haunted,
One arctic moon had disenchanted.
All the sweet secrets therein hid
By Fancy, ghastly spells undid.
Eldest mason, Frost, had piled
Swift cathedrals in the wild;
The piny hosts were sheeted ghosts
In the star-lit minster aisled.

Woods in Winter