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| WHEN the hounds of spring are on winter’s traces, | |
| The mother of months in meadow or plain | |
| Fills the shadows and windy places | |
| With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain; | |
| And the brown bright nightingale amorous | 5 |
| Is half assuaged for Itylus, | |
| For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces, | |
| The tongueless vigil, and all the pain. | |
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| Come with bows bent and with emptying of quivers, | |
| Maiden most perfect, lady of light, | 10 |
| With a noise of winds and many rivers, | |
| With a clamour of waters, and with might; | |
| Bind on thy sandals, O thou most fleet, | |
| Over the splendour and speed of thy feet; | |
| For the faint east quickens, the wan west shivers, | 15 |
| Round the feet of the day and the feet of the night. | |
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| Where shall we find her, how shall we sing to her, | |
| Fold our hands round her knees, and cling? | |
| O that man’s heart were as fire and could spring to her, | |
| Fire, or the strength of the streams that spring! | 20 |
| For the stars and the winds are unto her | |
| As raiment, as songs of the harp-player; | |
| For the risen stars and the fallen cling to her, | |
| And the southwest-wind and the west-wind sing. | |
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| For winter’s rains and ruins are over, | 25 |
| And all the season of snows and sins; | |
| The days dividing lover and lover, | |
| The light that loses, the night that wins; | |
| And time remember’d is grief forgotten, | |
| And frosts are slain and flowers begotten, | 30 |
| And in green underwood and cover | |
| Blossom by blossom the spring begins. | |
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| The full streams feed on flower of rushes, | |
| Ripe grasses trammel a travelling foot, | |
| The faint fresh flame of the young year flushes | 35 |
| From leaf to flower and flower to fruit; | |
| And fruit and leaf are as gold and fire, | |
| And the oat is heard above the lyre, | |
| And the hoofèd heel of a satyr crushes | |
| The chestnut-husk at the chestnut-root. | 40 |
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| And Pan by noon and Bacchus by night, | |
| Fleeter of foot than the fleet-foot kid, | |
| Follows with dancing and fills with delight | |
| The Mænad and the Bassarid; | |
| And soft as lips that laugh and hide | 45 |
| The laughing leaves of the trees divide, | |
| And screen from seeing and leave in sight | |
| The god pursuing, the maiden hid. | |
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| The ivy falls with the Bacchanal’s hair | |
| Over her eyebrows hiding her eyes; | 50 |
| The wild vine slipping down leaves bare | |
| Her bright breast shortening into sighs; | |
| The wild vine slips with the weight of its leaves, | |
| But the berried ivy catches and cleaves | |
| To the limbs that glitter, the feet that scare | 55 |
| The wolf that follows, the fawn that flies. | |
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