Magdalen Walks

The little white clouds are racing over the sky,

      And the fields are strewn with the gold of the flower of March,

      The daffodil breaks under foot, and the tasselled larch

Sways and swings as the thrush goes hurrying by.

A delicate odour is borne on the wings of the morning breeze,

      The odour of deep wet grass, and of brown new-furrowed earth,

      The birds are singing for joy of the Spring's glad birth,

Hopping from branch to branch on the rocking trees.

And all the woods are alive with the murmur and sound of Spring,

      And the rose-bud breaks into pink on the climbing briar,

      And the crocus-bed is a quivering moon of fire

Girdled round with the belt of an amethyst ring.

And the plane to the pine-tree is whispering some tale of love

      Till it rustles with laughter and tosses its mantle of green,

      And the gloom of the wych-elm's hollow is lit with the iris sheen

Of the burnished rainbow throat and the silver breast of a dove.

See! the lark starts up from his bed in the meadow there,

      Breaking the gossamer threads and the nets of dew,

      And flashing adown the river, a flame of blue!

The kingfisher flies like an arrow, and wounds the air.

And the sense of my life is sweet! though I know that the end is nigh:

      For the ruin and rain of winter will shortly come,

      The lily will lose its gold, and the chestnut-bloom

In billows of red and white on the grass will lie.

And even the light of the sun will fade at the last,

      And the leaves will fall, and the birds will hasten away,

      And I will be left in the snow of a flowerless day

To think on the glories of Spring, and the joys of a youth long past.

Yet be silent, my heart! do not count it a profitless thing

      To have seen the splendour of the sun, and of grass, and of flower!

      To have lived and loved! for I hold that to love for an hour

Is better for man and for woman than cycles of blossoming Spring.