Poems and Ballads (second series)/A Vision of Spring in Winter

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

For other versions of this work, see A Vision of Spring in Winter.

A VISION OF SPRING IN WINTER.

 

i.

O tender time that love thinks long to see,

Sweet foot of spring that with her footfall sows
Late snowlike flowery leavings of the snows,
Be not too long irresolute to be;
O mother‑month, where have they hidden thee?
Out of the pale time of the flowerless rose
I reach my heart out toward the springtime lands,
I stretch my spirit forth to the fair hours,
The purplest of the prime;
I lean my soul down over them, with hands
Made wide to take the ghostly growths of flowers;
I send my love back to the lovely time.

ii.

Where has the greenwood hid thy gracious head?

Veiled with what visions while the grey world grieves,
Or muffled with what shadows of green leaves,
What warm intangible green shadows spread
To sweeten the sweet twilight for thy bed?
What sleep enchants thee? what delight deceives?
Where the deep dreamlike dew before the dawn
Feels not the fingers of the sunlight yet
Its silver web unweave,
Thy footless ghost on some unfooted lawn
Whose air the unrisen sunbeams fear to fret
Lives a ghost's life of daylong dawn and eve.

iii.

Sunrise it sees not, neither set of star,

Large nightfall, nor imperial plenilune,
Nor strong sweet shape of the full‑breasted noon;
But where the silver‑sandalled shadows are,

Too soft for arrows of the sun to mar,
Moves with the mild gait of an ungrown moon:
Hard overhead the half‑lit crescent swims,
The tender‑coloured night draws hardly breath,
The light is listening;
They watch the dawn of slender‑shapen limbs,
Virginal, born again of doubtful death,
Chill foster‑father of the weanling spring.

iv.

As sweet desire of day before the day,

As dreams of love before the true love born,
From the outer edge of winter overworn
The ghost arisen of May before the May
Takes through dim air her unawakened way,
The gracious ghost of morning risen ere morn.
With little unblown breasts and child‑eyed looks
Following, the very maid, the girl‑child spring,
Lifts windward her bright brows,
Dips her light feet in warm and moving brooks,

And kindles with her own mouth's colouring
The fearful firstlings of the plumeless boughs.

v.

I seek thee sleeping, and awhile I see,

Fair face that art not, how thy maiden breath
Shall put at last the deadly days to death
And fill the fields and fire the woods with thee
And seaward hollows where my feet would be
When heaven shall hear the word that April saith
To change the cold heart of the weary time,
To stir and soften all the time to tears,
Tears joyfuller than mirth;
As even to May's clear height the young days climb
With feet not swifter than those fair first years
Whose flowers revive not with thy flowers on earth.

vi.

I would not bid thee, though I might, give back

One good thing youth has given and borne away;
I crave not any comfort of the day

That is not, nor on time's retrodden track
Would turn to meet the white‑robed hours or black
That long since left me on their mortal way;
Nor light nor love that has been, nor the breath
That comes with morning from the sun to be
And sets light hope on fire;
No fruit, no flower thought once too fair for death,
No flower nor hour once fallen from life's green tree,
No leaf once plucked or once fulfilled desire.

vii.

The morning song beneath the stars that fled

With twilight through the moonless mountain air,
While youth with burning lips and wreathless hair
Sang toward the sun that was to crown his head,
Rising; the hopes that triumphed and fell dead,
The sweet swift eyes and songs of hours that were;
These may'st thou not give back for ever; these,
As at the sea's heart all her wrecks lie waste,

Lie deeper than the sea;
But flowers thou may'st, and winds, and hours of ease,
And all its April to the world thou may'st
Give back, and half my April back to me.