Classic Poem

When light wakes late and early fails;
And where the catkins swung their tails
Like caterpillars on the trees
Nestle the nuts in twos and threes;
A late owl hooting from the wood
Chills my premonitory blood.

And when the hedges, thick with haws,
Are strewn with the loose harvest straws,
And sullen hips upon the brier
Betray the rose's sepulchre,
The stripped fields in the moonlight glow
White with imaginary snow.

How can I know, how can I know
But something of this winter's snow.
Shall fall on me till I become
Dumb as the snow-heaped earth is dumb,
And I myself this year shall be
Part of the year's mortality?

Never again to wake at spring
And see the blackthorn blossoming,
And flowers that later days forget,
Primrose and rumpled violet,
Coltsfoot and gold-rayed celandine,
Outspreading with a silvery shine;

And, where the beds of bluebells lie
Like water that reflects a sky,
That white flower veined with lilac blood,
The three-leaved sorrel of the wood,
The same that to St Patrick was
The Godhead in a house of grass.

Flowers are the dull earth's conscious eyes,
Full of sweet hopes and memories,
Making — O Immortality,
Surely thy image here I see! —
A little outspent sun and rain
Mix with the dust and live again.