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| OUT of the frozen earth below, | |
| Out of the melting of the snow, | |
| No flower, but a film, I push to light; | |
| No stem, no bud,—yet I have burst | |
| The bars of winter, I am the first, | 5 |
| O Sun, to greet thee out of the night! | |
| |
| Bare are the branches, cold is the air, | |
| Yet it is fire at the heart I bear, | |
| I come, a flame that is fed by none: | |
| The summer hath blossoms for her delight, | 10 |
| Thick and dewy and waxen-white, | |
| Thou seest me golden, O golden Sun! | |
| |
| Deep in the warm sleep underground | |
| Life is still, and the peace profound: | |
| Yet a beam that pierced, and a thrill that smote | 15 |
| Call’d me and drew me from far away;— | |
| I rose, I came, to the open day | |
| Have won, unshelter’d, alone, remote. | |
| |
| No bee strays out to greet me at morn, | |
| I shall die ere the butterfly is born, | 20 |
| I shall hear no note of the nightingale; | |
| The swallow will come at the break of green, | |
| He will never know that I have been | |
| Before him here when the world was pale. | |
| |
| They will follow, the rose with the thorny stem, | 25 |
| The hyacinth stalk,—soft airs for them; | |
| They shall have strength, I have but love: | |
| They shall not be tender as I,— | |
| Yet I fought here first, to bloom, to die, | |
| To shine in his face who shines above. | 30 |
| |
| O Glory of heaven, O Ruler of morn, | |
| O Dream that shap’d me, and I was born | |
| In thy likeness, starry, and flower of flame; | |
| I lie on the earth, and to thee look up, | |
| Into thy image will grow my cup, | 35 |
| Till a sunbeam dissolve it into the same. | |
POETS OF THE RENAISSANCE
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