Whence timid eyes look far,
Even where her kisses are
Awaited by the tender mother lips,
Earth’s, that is lonely and old,
Grown sad, fearful, and cold
With bitter winter and the sun’s eclipse ;
So the child slips
From bough to bough between the weeping tress,
And with frail fingers smooths and touches them.
They murmur in their sleep: the moonlight dips
And laughs, seeing how young buds catch life from
these
Child-kisses on the stem.
The leaves laugh low, and frosty-footed Time
Shoulders a lighter burden ; in the dale
Some distant notes of lovely music climb,
Thrown from the golden-throated nightingale,
Pale sobs of love and life
With death and fear at strife,
Fiercely beset and hardly conquering,
When spring’s bright eyes at last
Flash through the sullen past,
And tune its pain to tears, its peace to sing.
The earth’s lips cling
To the child’s bosom, and low smiles revive ;
Love is new-born upon the golden hour,
And all the life of all the exultant spring
Breathes in the wind that wakes the world alive
Into the likeness of a flower.
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