March: an Ode (I–III)

I.

Ere frost-flower and snow-blossom faded and fell, and the splendour
of winter had passed out of sight,
The ways of the woodlands were fairer and stranger than dreams that
fulfil us in sleep with delight;
The breath of the mouths of the winds had hardened on tree-tops and
branches that glittered and swayed
Such wonders and glories of blossomlike snow or of frost that
outlightens all flowers till it fade
That the sea was not lovelier than here was the land, nor the night
than the day, nor the day than the night,
Nor the winter sublimer with storm than the spring: such mirth had
the madness and might in thee made,
March, master of winds, bright minstrel and marshal of storms that
enkindle the season they smite.

II.

And now that the rage of thy rapture is satiate with revel and
ravin and spoil of the snow,
And the branches it brightened are broken, and shattered the
tree-tops that only thy wrath could lay low,
How should not thy lovers rejoice in thee, leader and lord of the
year that exults to be born
So strong in thy strength and so glad of thy gladness whose
laughter puts winter and sorrow to scorn?
Thou hast shaken the snows from thy wings, and the frost on thy
forehead is molten: thy lips are aglow
As a lover's that kindle with kissing, and earth, with her raiment
and tresses yet wasted and torn,
Takes breath as she smiles in the grasp of thy passion to feel
through her spirit the sense of thee flow.

III.

Fain, fain would we see but again for an hour what the wind and the
sun have dispelled and consumed,
Those full deep swan-soft feathers of snow with whose luminous
burden the branches implumed
Hung heavily, curved as a half-bent bow, and fledged not as birds
are, but petalled as flowers,
Each tree-top and branchlet a pinnacle jewelled and carved, or a
fountain that shines as it showers,
But fixed as a fountain is fixed not, and wrought not to last till
by time or by tempest entombed,
As a pinnacle carven and gilded of men: for the date of its doom is
no more than an hour's,
One hour of the sun's when the warm wind wakes him to wither the
snow-flowers that froze as they bloomed.