Classic Poem

Hail! season of delight and song,
Once more you tint the glowing skies,
And wake the busy insect throng
While strewing earth with thousand dyes:
The pirmrose and anemones,
The daisy prim and violet blue
In clustering colonies arise
Where'er I turn my raptured view,
Still speaking to the heart of things for ever new.

And now the sun is high o'erhead,
The noontide silence reigns around,
The floweret droops its weary head,
And echo listens for a sound.
Now far away I catch the bound
Of sea-waves, and the distant splash
Within the forest shades has found
An answering voice, the whirring dash
Of startled bird resounds from yonder moss-grown ash.

Here I, at large, could moralize
Upon the mis-spent life of man,
Comparing him to that which lies
For our good heed thro' Nature's plan.
But lo! an end to day's bright span,
The sun is drooping in the main,
The evening breeze begins to fan
The sleeping woods, while his last strain
The song-bird pours away upon the dark'ning plain.

O! Spring-time, passing fast away,
Would I could live with thee for ever,
Where never sorrow, age, decay
The spirit from its joy could sever;
But thou art passing, passing, never
Again to render up the past,
And hours spent with thee, down Time's river
Remorselessly thy hands have cast —
Will they ne'er live again? only in memory last?