Songs of the Spirit

And stream beneath their curtain are em- braced ; They drive and beat and hiss, Till their cold maiden kiss Touches the lake’s intolerable waste, And from the wave is born A maiden like the morn, In sudden foam, an Aphrodite chaste, Clean as the cold wind blown From each abyss of stone, Where the north whirlpool rushes down with wreckage interlaced. Where on the bank I stand In this gray barren land Of winter, and the doubtful glint of spring, If on the hills there glow Through the thick mist of snow Sunshine from westward in the evening ; While in a dell appear Violets and snowdrops clear, Buds of the larch, and swallows on the wing, Till once again the storm 56