Posthumous Poems/Gentle Spring
GENTLE SPRING
WRITTEN FOR A PICTURE BY FREDERICK SANDYS
O virgin Mother! of gentle days and nights,
Spring of fresh buds and spring of soft delights,
Come, with lips kissed of many an amorous hour,
Come, with hands heavy from the fervent flower,
The fleet first flower that feels the wind and sighs,
The tenderer leaf that draws the sun and dies;
Light butterflies like flowers alive in the air
Circling and crowning thy delicious hair,
And many a fruitful flower and floral fruit
Born of thy breath and fragrant from thy foot.
Thee, Mother, all things born desire, and thee
Earth and the fruitless hollows of the sea
Praise, and thy tender winds of ungrown wing
Fill heaven with murmurs of the sudden spring.
Spring of fresh buds and spring of soft delights,
Come, with lips kissed of many an amorous hour,
Come, with hands heavy from the fervent flower,
The fleet first flower that feels the wind and sighs,
The tenderer leaf that draws the sun and dies;
Light butterflies like flowers alive in the air
Circling and crowning thy delicious hair,
And many a fruitful flower and floral fruit
Born of thy breath and fragrant from thy foot.
Thee, Mother, all things born desire, and thee
Earth and the fruitless hollows of the sea
Praise, and thy tender winds of ungrown wing
Fill heaven with murmurs of the sudden spring.
1865.