Classic Poem

A hyacinth's lovely completeness
Unfolds to the chilly spring day,
A marvel of color and sweetness.
O tender-faced step-child of May,
Ere scarcely the winter is over,
You come with consoling amends;
The wild fickle wind is your lover,
And the cloud and the cold are your friends!

The wild fickle wind is your lover;
He searches through snowflakes and gloom
Your winter retreat to discover,
And kisses your cheek into bloom;
He charms you with tenderest praising,
Till, weary of fragrance and you,
He finds where the tulips are blazing,
And whispers his love-tale anew.

Do we love you because you are lonely?
And is it, sweet helper, the truth,
That freshness and novelty only
Made all the lost glamour of youth?
Or are joys really dearest and fleetest,
Which spring's doubtful dawning has nursed?
Is life's early dream, then, its sweetest?
Is there never a love like the first?

Ah, blest, that your season of blooming
Has come ere the wet earth is warm, —
Ere yet the bold beetle comes booming
To carry your sweetness by storm;
Ere yet on the billowy breezes,
Unchallenged, unhindered, and free
To rob and despoil as he pleases,
Comes sailing the freebooter bee.

The sluggard! for yet he reposes
Enshrined amid nectar-filled cells;
His dreams are of jasmine and roses,
But never of hyacinth-bells.
No vision of you ever crosses
His sleep in his honeyed estate.
Ah, well if we guess not the losses
Which come of our waking too late!

When breezes grow gentle and mellow,
Narcissus and daffodils vain
Will flutter in white and in yellow
And call him to conquest again;
But woe to the bloom where he settles,
Most rude and remorseless of thieves;
No shower can wash from its petals
The track which his violence leaves.

He takes without promise or payment,
And little he pities or knows
The stain on the lily's white raiment,
Or the sigh of the heartbroken rose.
You will die ere that harshest of masters
Can work you his flattering wrong;
It is well to perceive what disasters
Might come of our living too long!

Yet stay till these petulant showers
Have finished their mission of grace,
And brought the less beautiful flowers
To claim — though they fill not — your place;
Till spring's chilly twilight is over,
And April's uncertainty ends;
This wild fickle wind is your lover,
And the cloud and the cold are your friends!