With a laugh to answer the wind at play.

Why do I laugh? I do not know,

But you and I once passed this way.

Down in the hollow now white with snow

My heart is singing a song today.

Why do I sing? I do not know,

But you and I were here in May.

A Ballade of Old Romance

When April spreads her mantle green

Across the pasture-lands of snow,

And Spring’s first scarlet breasts are seen

Where treetops rustle to and fro;

Then come fair fragrant dreams as though

Our lightest fancy to entrance

And paint us what we fain would know

Adown the lanes of Old Romance.

Anon, we see the golden sheen

Of burnished mail the sunbeams throw,

Flashing the poplars tall between,

As knights ride by to meet the foe;

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