Impulses of Spring

Day burnishes the distant hills,
And clouds blush far away;
Life's heart with Nature's rapture thrills
To hail this glorious day.
The morning falls in dizzy light
On mountain tops and towers,
But speeds with soft and gentle flight
Among these valley-flowers.

There's music in the waking woods,
There's glory in the air;
Birds, in their merry summer moods,
Now rant and revel there:
Joy wakes, and wantons all around,
Love laughs in every call,
Music in many hearts is found,
And Poesy breathes in all.

The merry new-come nightingale
Woos Night's dull hours along,
Till Daylight at the sound turns pale,
And hastes to share the song.
A waste of sunny flowers is seen,
And incense fills the air;
No sunless place is found too mean
Spring's blushing gems to wear.

The horse-blob by the water-mill
Blooms in the foaming dam,
And pilewort flares around the hill,
Beside the sleeping lamb.
Spring is the happy breathing time
For young Love's stolen joys;
Spring is the Poet's luscious prime —
He revels in the noise

Of waking insects humming round,
And birds upon the wing,
And all the gushing soul of sound
That echoes of the Spring;
For in their joys his own are met,
Though tears stand in his eye;
In their gay mirth he half forgets
He ever knew to sigh.

He feeds on Spring's precarious boon,
A being of her race,
Where light, and shade, and shower, and sun,
Are ever changing place.
To-day he buds, and glows to meet
To-morrow's promised shower,
Then crushed by Care's intruding feet,
He fades — a broken flower!

His hopes, they change like summer clouds,
And fairy phantasies;
His pleasures, wrapt in gayer shrouds,
Are sorrows in disguise:
The sweetest smiles his heart can find
Possess his tears as well;
His highest pleasures leave behind
Their heart-ache, and farewell!

His are the fading "joys of grief;"
Care grows his favoured guest:
And Sorrow gives his heart relief,
Because it knows him best.
The sweetest flower on pleasure's path
Will bloom on sorrow's grave,
And earthly joys, and earthly mirth,
Their share of grief shall have.

True Poesy owns a haunted mind,
A thirst-enduring flame,
Burning the soul to leave behind
The memory of a name.
Though life be reckoned sweetly sold
For toil so ill repaid —
The marble epitaph, how cold!

Although with gold inlaid.
While the rude clown of thoughtless clay,
In feelings unrefined,
Lives out life's cloudless holiday,
With nothing on his mind; —
Then sound as ever king hath slept,
On earth's green lap he lies;
While Beauty's tears, so sweetly wept,
And Friendship's warmest sighs
Are left upon his lowly grave,
And live his only fame,
While frowning Envy never gave
One insult to his name;
Yet who would from their cares be free
For such unconscious bliss?
A living blank in life to be,
Pain's sympathy to miss?

To meet enthusiastic May
As but dull Winter's hours,
And primrose pale, and daisy gay,
As white and yellow flowers,
And not as friends in our esteem,
To cheer dull life's sojourn; —
Let me, throughout its cheating dream,
Much rather feel and mourn

The bliss and grief, though past control,
That with extremes inflame;
Feelings, blood-rushing through the soul,
Not uttered in a name;
Where no words live, to free the mind
From hidden hopes or fears,
Where all the utterance can find
Are gushing smiles and tears.

Yet woo I not that burning flame,
Enkindling ecstasy,
Blazing in dreams to win a name
From Fame's eternity.

Fame's yearning breath breeds not my sigh,
Nor eats my heart away,
Burning life's every channel dry
To triumph o'er decay.

Yet with the minstrelsy on earth
I too would love the lyre,
For heaven ne'er gave the meanest birth,
To quench that holy fire:
It owns the muse's sweetest smiles,
And scatters life around;
Grief, sick with Hope's heart-broken toils,
Grows happy at the sound.

The lyre is pleasure's blest abode,
And round it angels throng;
The lyre is as the voice of God,
The prophets spake in song.
And as the sun this day brings forth
Creations every hour,
Care's wreath warms at the muse's mirth,
And blushes into flower.