Classic Poem

I.

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.

II.

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.

III.

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.

IV.

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!

V.

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.

VI.

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?