The Winds

In these green fields, in this green spring,     In this green world of burning sweet     That drives its sour from everything     And burns the Arctic with new heat,     That seems so slow and flies so fleet     On half-seen wing;     In this green world the birds are all     With motion mad, are wild with song;     The grass leaps like a sudden wall     Flung up against a foe that long     Strode round and wrought his frosty wrong.     The bright winds call,     The bright winds answer; the clouds rise     White from the grave, shaking their head,     Strewing the grave-clothes through the skies,     In languid drifting shadow shed     Upon the fields where, slowly spread,     Each shadow dies.     In every wood is green and gold,     The unbridged river runs all green     With queenly swan-clouds floating bold     Down to the mill's swift guillotine.     Beyond the mill each murdered queen     Floats white and cold.     --If I could rise up in a cloud     And look down on the new earth in flight,     Shadow-like cast my thought's thin shroud     Back upon these fields of light;     And hear the winds of day and night     Meet, singing loud!