The Oxford Book of Canadian Verse
The Coming of the SpringAgnes Maule Machar (18371927)
W
Our pulses thrilling;
What strange mysterious sense of gladness
Transfused with sadness;
Trembling in opal and purple hues
That wake and melt in azure high,
Brooding in sunbeams that suffuse
With the light of hope, the fields that lie
Quiet and grey ’neath the sunset sky!
To a glad new birth—
The birth of the fresh, young, joyous spring,
New blossoming—
Bidding the south wind softly blow,
Loosing the tongues of the murmuring streams,
Sending the sap with a swifter flow
Through the bare brown trees, and waking dreams
Of summer shadows and golden gleams!
Amid mosses green,
The fair hepatica wakes to meet
The hastening feet
Of the children that soon, with laughter sweet,
Shall shout with glee to find it there,
And bear it homeward—the herald meet
Of the countless bells and blossoms fair
That shall ring sweet chimes on the balmy air.
By streams that wind—
Singing a song in soft undertones—
O’er the smooth brown stones;
And pure white lilies and purple phlox
And violets yellow and white and grey,
And columbines gleaming from lichened rocks,
And dogwood blossoms and snowy may,
Shall wreathe with beauty each woodland way.
About our eaves,
The chorister-birds shall their matins ring,
Sweet carolling;
While, through the bowery orchard trees,
All sprinkled with drifts of scented snow,
Comes the fragrant breath of the morning breeze,
And over the long lush grass below
Soft wavering shadows glide to and fro.
Beneath purer skies—
The Spring that can never pass away
Nor know decay—
Sending new joy through the stricken heart,
Waking new life from the silent tomb,
Joining the souls that have moved apart,
Bidding earth’s winter for ever depart,
With incompleteness, pain, and gloom,
Till—ransomed at last from its inwrought doom—
It shall blossom forth in immortal bloom?