Slowly fall, O golden sands, Slowly fall and let me sing, Wrapt in the ecstasy of youth, The wild delights of Spring.
Oh, hush, my heart, and take thine ease, For here is April weather! The daffodils beneath the trees Are all a-row together.
The thrush is back with his old note; The scarlet tulip blowing; And white--ay, white as my love's throat-- The dogwood boughs are glowing.
The lilac bush is sweet again; Down every wind that passes, Fly flakes from hedgerow and from lane; The bees are in the grasses.
And Grief goes out, and Joy comes in, And Care is but a feather; And every lad his love can win, For here is April weather.
There flames the first gay daffodil Where winter-long the snows have lain: Who buried Love, all spent and still? There flames the first gay daffodil. Go, Love's alive on yonder hill, And yours for asking, joy and pain, There flames the first gay daffodil Where winter-long the snows have lain!
The Easter sunrise flung a bar of gold O'er the awakening wold. What was thine answer, O thou brooding earth, What token of re-birth, Of tender vernal mirth, Thou the long-prisoned in the bonds of cold?
Under the kindling panoply which God Spreads over tree and clod, I looked far abroad. Umber the sodden reaches seemed and seer As when the dying year, With rime-white sandals shod, Faltered and fell upon its frozen bier. Of some rathe quickening, some divine Renascence not a sign!
And yet, and yet, With touch of viol-chord, with mellow fret, The lyric South amid the bough-tops stirred, And one lone bird An unexpected jet Of song projected through the morning blue, As though some wondrous hidden thing it knew.
And so I gathered heart, and cried again: "O earth, make plain, At this matutinal hour, The triumph and the power Of life eternal over death and pain, Although it be but by some simple flower!"
And then, with sudden light, Was dowered my veilèd sight, And I beheld in a sequestered place A slender crocus show its sun-bright face. O miracle of Grace, Earth's Easter answer came, The revelation of transfiguring Might, In that small crocus flame!
It is the time of violets. It is the very day When in the shadow of the wood Spring shall have her say, Remembering how the early gods Came up the violet way. Are there not violets And gods-- To-day?