Classic Poem

I

Easter in the Pelham hills — Easter late, as Pelham likes —
Northern boughs need time enough to sprout their tardy cones and spikes!
Checkered squares of shimmering green promise faintly, one by one,
Where the orchards, long besieged, surrender to the ardent sun.
From dawn till eve the promise ripens, changing tints from noon to noon,
And through the mist of breathing things nightly climbs the Paschal moon.
Oh, were you now in Amherst, it's walking you'd be now
The pathway up the chapel hill, and a white tree crowns the brow!
It rises from the moonlight — still foam from a waveless sea —
And Amherst boys are walking there, beneath the cherry-tree.
It rises from a random thought — old love from an old perfume —
And Amherst boys that are far away still walk beneath the bloom.

II

Easter in the Pelham hills, Easter blossoms as of yore,
And earth, that bears the bloom anew, maiden seems forevermore.
Yet what if earth remembers, when the warm familiar rain,
Driving in a joyous fury, stirs her languid blood again,
Stirs the sleeping branch where beauty folded close in darkness shrouds,
And from every bud the cherry-blossoms burst in snowy clouds?
You cannot bloom so strangely, O phantom tree I love,
But my heart, like earth, remembers where-from your beauty throve —
Perished Spring, and Spring that's here, and Spring that's still to be,
And o'er them all the Paschal light — and, lo, my cherry-tree!
Your sailing boughs are wrapped in dreams, your flower is white, like truth;
Boyhood walks beneath your branches; underneath your shade is youth.