| |
| LIKE souls that balance joy and pain, | |
| With tears and smiles from heaven again | |
| The maiden Spring upon the plain | |
| Came in a sun-lit fall of rain. | |
| In crystal vapor everywhere | 5 |
| Blue isles of heaven laugh’d between, | |
| And far, in forest-deeps unseen, | |
| The topmost elm-tree gather’d green | |
| From draughts of balmy air. | |
| |
| Sometimes the linnet pip’d his song: | 10 |
| Sometimes the throstle whistled strong | |
| Sometimes the sparhawk, wheel’d along, | |
| Hush’d all the groves from fear of wrong: | |
| By grassy capes with fuller sound | |
| In curves the yellowing river ran, | 15 |
| And drooping chestnut-buds began | |
| To spread into the perfect fan, | |
| Above the teeming ground. | |
| |
| Then, in the boyhood of the year, | |
| Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere | 20 |
| Rode thro’ the coverts of the deer, | |
| With blissful treble ringing clear. | |
| She seem’d a part of joyous Spring; | |
| A gown of grass-green silk she wore, | |
| Buckled with golden clasps before; | 25 |
| A light-green tuft of plumes she bore | |
| Clos’d in a golden ring. | |
| |
| Now on some twisted ivy-net, | |
| Now by some tinkling rivulet, | |
| In mosses mix’d with violet | 30 |
| Her cream-white mule his pastern set: | |
| And fleeter now she skimm’d the plains | |
| Than she whose elfin prancer springs | |
| By night to eery warblings, | |
| When all the glimmering moorland rings | 35 |
| With jingling bridle-reins. | |
| |
| As fast she fled thro’ sun and shade, | |
| The happy winds upon her play’d, | |
| Blowing the ringlet from the braid: | |
| She look’d so lovely, as she sway’d | 40 |
| The rein with dainty finger-tips, | |
| A man had given all other bliss, | |
| And all his worldly worth for this, | |
| To waste his whole heart in one kiss | |
| Upon her perfect lips. | 45 |
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