A Niello

I.     It is not early spring and yet     Of bloodroot blooms along the stream,     And blotted banks of violet,     My heart will dream.     Is it because the windflower apes     The beauty that was once her brow,     That the white memory of it shapes     The April now?     Because the wild-rose wears the blush     That once made sweet her maidenhood,     Its thought makes June of barren bush     And empty wood?     And then I think how young she died     Straight, barren Death stalks down the trees,     The hard-eyed Hours by his side,     That kill and freeze. II.     When orchards are in bloom again     My heart will bound, my blood will beat,     To hear the redbird so repeat,     On boughs of rosy stain,     His blithe, loud song, like some far strain     From out the past, among the bloom,     (Where bee and wasp and hornet boom)     Fresh, redolent of rain.     When orchards are in bloom once more,     Invasions of lost dreams will draw     My feet, like some insistent law,     Through blossoms to her door:     In dreams I'll ask her, as before,     To let me help her at the well;     And fill her pail; and long to tell     My love as once of yore.     I shall not speak until we quit     The farm-gate, leading to the lane     And orchard, all in bloom again,     Mid which the bluebirds sit     And sing; and through whose blossoms flit     The catbirds crying while they fly:     Then tenderly I'll speak, and try     To tell her all of it.     And in my dream again she'll place     Her hand in mine, as oft before,     When orchards are in bloom once more,     With all her young-girl grace:     And we shall tarry till a trace     Of sunset dyes the heav'ns; and then     We'll part; and, parting, I again     Shall bend and kiss her face.     And homeward, singing, I shall go     Along the cricket-chirring ways,     While sunset, one long crimson blaze     Of orchards, lingers low:     And my dead youth again I'll know,     And all her love, when spring is here     Whose memory holds me many a year,     Whose love still haunts me so! III.     I would not die when Springtime lifts     The white world to her maiden mouth,     And heaps its cradle with gay gifts,     Breeze-blown from out the singing South:     Too full of life and loves that cling;     Too heedless of all mortal woe,     The young, unsympathetic Spring,     That Death should never know.     I would not die when Summer shakes     Her daisied locks below her hips,     And naked as a star that takes     A cloud, into the silence slips:     Too rich is Summer; poor in needs;     In egotism of loveliness     Her pomp goes by; and never heeds     One life the more or less.     But I would die when Autumn goes,     The dark rain dripping from her hair,     Through forests where the wild wind blows     Death and the red wreck everywhere:     Sweet as love's last farewells and tears     To fall asleep when skies are gray,     In the old autumn of my years,     Like a dead leaf borne far away.