Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

The Oxford Book of Canadian Verse

The Coming of the Spring

Agnes Maule Machar (1837–1927)

WITH subtle presence the air is filling,

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!

Thor’s thunder-hammer hath waked the earth

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!

Down in the budding woods unseen,

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.

And tiny ferns their fronds unbind

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.

Soon, in the shadow of dewy leaves

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.

But when shall the better Spring arise

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?