Classic Poem

Whence come they, small and brown,
Miraculous and frail,
Like spring's invisible pollen blown
On the wild southern gale?
From whatsoever depth of gold and blue,
Far-templed sand and ringed palms they wing,
Falling like dew
Upon the land, they bring
Music and spring,
With all things homely-sweet
Exhaled beneath the feet
On stony mountain-trail,
Or where green slopes, through tamarisk and pine,
Seaward decline —
Thyme and the lavender,
Where honey-bees make stir,
And the green dragon-flies with silver whirr
Loot the last rosemaries —
The morning-glory, rosy as her name,
The poppies' leaping flame
Along the kindled vines,
Down barren banks the vetches spilt like lees,
In watery meadows the great celandines
Afloat like elfin moons,
In the pale world of dunes
A foam of asphodel
Upon the sea's blue swell,
And, where the great rocks valley-ward are rolled,
The tasselled ilex-bloom fringing dark woods with gold.

Shyly the first begin —
And the thrilled ear delays,
Through a fresh veil of interblossomed mays
Straining to win
That soft sequestered note,
Where the new throat,
In some deep cleft of quietness remote,
Its budding bliss essays.
Shyly the first begin —
But, as the numerous rose
First to the hedgerow throws
A blossom here and there,
As if in hope to win
The unheeding glances of the passer-by,
And, never catching his dulled eye,
Thinks: " But my tryst is with the Spring! "
And suddenly the dusty roadside glows
With scented glory, crimsoned to its close —
So wing by wing,
Unheeded and unheard,
Bird after bird,
They come;
And where the woods were dumb,
Dumb all the streamsides and unlistening vales,
Now glory streams along the evening gales,
And all the midday is a murmuring,
Now they are come.

(ii)

I lie among the thyme;
The sea is at my feet,
And all the air is sweet
With the capricious chime
Of interwoven notes
From those invisible and varying throats,
As though the blossomed trees,
The laden breeze,
The springs within their caves,
And even the sleeping waves,
Had all begun to sing.

Sweet, sweet, oh heavy-sweet
As tropic bales undone
At a Queen's ebon feet
In equatorial sun,
Those myriad balmy voices
Drip iterated song.
And every tiny tawny throat rejoices
To mix its separate rapture with the throng.
For now the world is theirs,
And the captivated airs
Carry no other note
As from midsummer's throat,
Strong-pillared, organ-built,
Pours their torrential glory,
On their own waves they float,
And toss from crest to crest their cockle-shell of story —
And, as plumed breakers tilt
Against the plangent beaches,
And all the long reticulated reaches
Hiss with their silver lances,
And heave with their deep rustle of retreat
At fall of day —
So swells, and so withdraws that tidal lay
As spring advances.

(iii)

I lie among the thyme,
The sea is at my feet,
And the slow-kindling moon begins to climb
To her bejewelled seat —
And now, and now again,
Mixed with her silver rain,
Listen, a rarer strain,
A tenderer fall —
And all the night is white and musical,
The forests hold their breath, the sky lies still
On every listening hill,
And far far out those straining sails,
Even as they dip and turn,
One moment backward yearn
To the rich laughter of the nightingales.