YEARS AGO
Why should I think of spring in France
When each new April's new mischance
Of gypsy magic and green change
Leaves earth familiarly strange?
Were there not springs before that spring?
Was there not whist and whispering
Of wind in willow until then?
And shall there not be springs again?
I can remember times more near
And longer past than that strange year;
Hip-booted springs, half faun, half boy,
Over the lakes in Illinois,
Following the swollen runnels down
To beaches where the waves broke brown
Shaking the air, and the landward breeze
Smelled of fresh water and far pine trees,
And overnight in the steep ravine
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