A Cold Day in May

Spring ebbed into the lakes and streams,
Or to the earth's warm heart;
And stalk and leaf, as with a dart,
Were pierced by winter's backward gleams!
O May! O treacherous May! these months are very
dreams.

The clattering winds above me rolled,
Like chariots in a flight;
The sky was veined with blue and white,
With here and there some cheerless gold;
The very brightness was no joy, it was so cold.

But ah! with those true southern eyes
And olive-shaded brow,
Beneath the half-clothed linden bough,
A boy begins his melodies:
And now I live and breathe in pure Italian skies.

How vine-like is yon eglantine!
How genial grows the day!
And see! up Rothay's gleaming way
How sweetly Arno's waters shine;
And thou, dear Fairfield! art a well-known Apennine!

Thus cold is manhood's summer day;
And grace perchance may be
In part the blissful memory
Of Christian childhood's marvellous ray,
Ere the bad world had scared celestial sights away.

Our penance, then, doth but retrace
A former road; we see
The scenes reversed, and, it may be,
Dim through our tears; and what is grace
But Heaven's lost song on earth, most sweetly out of
place?