In Middle Spring.

When the fields are rolled into naked gold,             And a ripple of fire and pearl is blent         With the emerald surges of wood and wold             Like a flower-foam bursting violent;         When the dingles and deeps of the woodlands old             Are glad with a sibilant life new sent,         Too rare to be told are the manifold             Sweet fancies that quicken redolent         In the heart that no longer is cold.         How it knows of the wings of the hawk that swings             From the drippled dew scintillant seen;         Why the red-bird hides where it sings and sings             In melodious quiverings of green;         How the wind to the red-bud and dogwood brings             Big pearls of worth and corals of sheen,         Whiles he lisps to the strings of a lute that rings             Of love in the South who is queen,         Where the fountain of poesy springs.         Go seek in the ray for a sworded fay             The chestnut's buds into blooms that rips;         And look in the brook that runs laughing gay             For the nymph with the laughing lips;         In the brake for the dryad whose eyes are gray,             From whose bosom the perfume drips;         The faun hid away where the grasses sway             Thick ivy low down on his hips,         Pursed lips on a syrinx at play.         So ho, for the rose, the Romeo rose,             And the lyric he hides in his heart;         And ho, for the epic the oak tree knows,             Sonorous and mighty in art.         The lily with woes that her white face shows             Hath a satire she yearns to impart,         But none of those, her hates and her foes,             For a heart that sings but for sport,         And shifts where the song-wind blows.