To be lean and bare and perished grace by grace, And flower by flower discharmed, Comes, to a purpose none, Not even the Scorner, which is the Fool, can blink, The dead-march of the year.

Dead things and dying! Now the long-laboured soul Listens, and pines. But never a note of hope p. 7Sounds: whether in those high, Transcending unisons of resignation That speed the sovran sun, As he goes southing, weakening, minishing, Almighty in obedience; or in those Small, sorrowful colloquies Of bronze and russet and gold, Colour with colour, dying things with dead, That break along this visual orchestra: As in that other one, the audible, Horn answers horn, hautboy and violin Talk, and the ’cello calls the clarionet And flute, and the poor heart is glad. There is no hope in these—only despair.

p. 7

Then, destiny in act, ensues That most tremendous passage in the score: When hangman rains and winds have wrought Their worst, and, the brave lights gone down, The low strings, the brute brass, the sullen drums Sob, grovel, and curse themselves Silent. . . . But on the spirit of Man And on the heart of the World there falls p. 8A strange, half-desperate peace: A war-worn, militant, gray jubilance In the unkind, implacable tyranny Of Winter, the obscene, Old, crapulous Regent, who in his loins— O, who but feels he carries in his loins The wild, sweet-blooded, wonderful harlot, Spring?

p. 8

p. 9I.

p. 9

Low—low Over a perishing after-glow, A thin, red shred of moon Trailed. In the windless air The poplars all ranked lean and chill. The smell of winter loitered there, And the Year’s heart felt still. Yet not so far away Seemed the mad Spring, But that, as lovers will, I let my laughing heart go play, As it had been a fond maid’s frolicking; And, turning thrice the gold I’d got, In the good gloom Solemnly wished me—what? What, and with whom?

p. 10II

p. 10

Moon of half-candied meres And flurrying, fading snows; Moon of unkindly rains, Wild skies, and troubled vanes; When the Norther snarls and bites, And the lone moon walks a-cold, And the lawns grizzle o’ nights, And wet fogs search the fold: Here in this heart of mine A dream that warms like wine, A dream one other knows, Moon of the roaring weirs And the sip-sopping close, February Fill-Dyke, Shapes like a royal rose—  A red, red rose!

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