CXV.

OW fades the last long streak of snow,
Now burgeons every maze of quick

About the flowering squares, and thick

By ashen roots the violets blow.

Now rings the woodland loud and long,
The distance takes a lovelier hue,

And drown'd in yonder living blue

The lark becomes a sightless song.

Now dance the lights on lawn and lea,
The flocks are whiter down the vale,

And milkier every milky sail

On winding stream or distant sea;

Where now the seamew pipes, or dives

In yonder greening gleam, and fly

The happy birds, that change their sky To build and brood; that live their lives

From land to land; and in my breast

Spring wakens too; and my regret
Becomes an April violet,

And buds and blossoms like the rest.

CXVI.

S it, then, regret for buried time
That keenlier in sweet April wakes,

And meets the year, and gives and takes

The colours of the crescent prime?

Not all the songs, the stirring air,
The life re-orient out of dust,

Cry thro' the sense to hearten trust
In that which made the world so fair.

Not all regret: the face will shine

Upon me, while I muse alone;

And that dear voice, I once have known

Still speak to me of me and mine:

Yet less of sorrow lives in me

For days of happy commune dead;
Less yearning for the friendship fled,

Than some strong bond which is to be.

CXVII.

DAYS and hours, your work is this,
To hold me from my proper place,

A little while from his embrace,

For fuller gain of after bliss:

That out of distance might ensue
Desire of nearness doubly sweet;

And unto meeting when we meet,

Delight a hundredfold accrue,

For every grain of sand that runs,
And every span of shade that steals,

And every kiss of toothed wheels,

And all the courses of the suns.

CXVIII.

ONTEMPLATE all this work of Time,
The giant labouring in his youth;

Nor dream of human love and truth,

As dying Nature's earth and lime;

But trust that those we call the dead
Are breathers of an ampler day

For ever nobler ends. They say,
The solid earth whereon we tread

In tracts of fluent heat began,

And grew to seeming-random forms,

The seeming prey of cyclic storms,

Till at the last arose the man;