| |
| GONE is the long, long winter night; | |
| Look, my beloved one! | |
| How glorious, through his depths of light, | |
| Rolls the majestic sun! | |
| The willows, waked from winter’s death, | 5 |
| Give out a fragrance like thy breath,— | |
| The summer is begun! | |
| |
| Ay, ’t is the long bright summer day: | |
| Hark, to that mighty crash! | |
| The loosened ice-ridge breaks away, | 10 |
| The smitten waters flash. | |
| Seaward the glittering mountain rides, | |
| While down its green translucent sides | |
| The foamy torrents dash. | |
| |
| See, love, my boat is moored for thee, | 15 |
| By ocean’s weedy floor,— | |
| The petrel does not skim the sea | |
| More swiftly than my oar. | |
| We ’ll go where, on the rocky isles, | |
| Her eggs the screaming sea-fowl piles | 20 |
| Beside the pebbly shore. | |
| |
| Or, bide thou where the poppy blows, | |
| With wind-flowers frail and fair, | |
| While I, upon his isle of snows, | |
| Seek and defy the bear. | 25 |
| Fierce though he be, and huge of frame, | |
| This arm his savage strength shall tame, | |
| And drag him from his lair. | |
| |
| When crimson sky and flamy cloud | |
| Bespeak the summer o’er, | 30 |
| And the dead valleys wear a shroud | |
| Of snows that melt no more, | |
| I ’ll build of ice thy winter home, | |
| With glistening walls and glassy dome, | |
| And spread with skins the floor. | 35 |
| |
| The white fox by thy couch shall play; | |
| And from the frozen skies | |
| The meteors of a mimic day | |
| Shall flash upon thine eyes. | |
| And I—for such thy vow—meanwhile | 40 |
| Shall hear thy voice and see thy smile, | |
| Till that long midnight flies. | |
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