To-day the world is wide and fair With sunny fields of lucid air, And waters dancing everywhere; The snow is almost gone; The noon is builded high with light, And over heaven's liquid height,...
The old grey year is near his term in sooth, And now with backward eye and soft-laid palm Awakens to a golden dream of youth, A second childhood lovely and most calm, And the smooth hour about his misty head...
The sun falls warm: the southern winds awake: The air seethes upward with a steamy shiver: Each dip of the road is now a crystal lake, And every rut a little dancing river....
With loitering step and quiet eye, Beneath the low November sky, I wandered in the woods, and found A clearing, where the broken ground Was scattered with black stumps and briers,...
The hills and leafless forests slowly yield To the thick-driving snow. A little while And night shall darken down. In shouting file The woodmen's carts go by me homeward-wheeled,...
Along the waste, a great way off, the pines, Like tall slim priests of storm, stand up and bar The low long strip of dolorous red that lines The under west, where wet winds moan afar....
'Tis a land where no hurricane falls, But the infinite azure regards Its waters for ever, its walls Of granite, its limitless swards; Where the fens to their innermost pool...
O gentle sister spirit, when you smile My soul is like a lonely coral isle, An islet shadowed by a single palm, Ringed round with reef and foam, but inly calm.