Classic Poem

The grey and wrinkled earth again is young
And lays aside her tattered winter weeds
For April-coloured gauze, and gives her tongue
To jocund songs instead of pedants' screeds.
Scatter the thin, white ashes of the hearth,
And throw the brilliant diamond casement wide —
Oh, wonder of the lonely garden garth!
Oh, golden glory of the steep hillside
Where flames the living loveliness of God!â?¦
But far, far off, beyond the bloom and bud
A fiercer blossom burgeons from the sod
Bright with the hues of honour and of blood;
And men have plucked the sanguine flower of pain
Where violets might be growing in the rain!