Maytime In Midwinter

A new year gleams on us, tearful     And troubled and smiling dim     As the smile on a lip still fearful,     As glances of eyes that swim:     But the bird of my heart makes cheerful     The days that are bright for him.     Child, how may a mans love merit     The grace you shed as you stand,     The gift that is yours to inherit?     Through you are the bleak days bland;     Your voice is a light to my spirit;     You bring the sun in your hand.     The years wing shows not a feather     As yet of the plumes to be;     Yet here in the shrill grey weather     The springs self stands at my knee,     And laughs as we commune together,     And lightens the world we see.     The rains are as dews for the christening     Of dawns that the nights benumb:     The springs voice answers me listening     For speech of a child to come,     While promise of music is glistening     On lips that delight keeps dumb.     The mists and the storms receding     At sight of you smile and die:     Your eyes held wide on me reading     Shed summer across the sky:     Your heart shines clear for me, heeding     No more of the world than I.     The world, what is it to you, dear,     And me, if its face be grey,     And the new-born year be a shrewd year     For flowers that the fierce winds fray?     You smile, and the sky seems blue, dear;     You laugh, and the month turns May.     Love cares not for care, he has daffed her     Aside as a mate for guile:     The sight that my soul yearns after     Feeds full my sense for awhile;     Your sweet little sun-faced laughter,     Your good little glad grave smile.     Your hands through the bookshelves flutter;     Scott, Shakespeare, Dickens, are caught;     Blakes visions, that lighten and mutter;     Molire and his smile has nought     Left on it of sorrow, to utter     The secret things of his thought.     No grim thing written or graven     But grows, if you gaze on it, bright;     A larks note rings from the raven,     And tragedys robe turns white;     And shipwrecks drift into haven;     And darkness laughs, and is light.     Grief seems but a vision of madness;     Lifes key-note peals from above     With nought in it more of sadness     Than broods on the heart of a dove:     At sight of you, thought grows gladness,     And life, through love of you, love.