APRIL, April,
Laugh thy girlish laughter;
Then, the moment after,
Weep thy girlish tears!
April, that mine ears
Like a lover greetest,
If I tell thee, sweetest,
All my hopes and fears,
April, April,
Laugh thy golden laughter,
But, the moment after,
Weep thy golden tears!
I shall not go with pain
Whether you hold me, whether you forget
My little loss and my immortal gain.
O flower unseen, O fountain sealed apart!
Give me one look, one look remembering yet,
Sweet heart.
I shall not go with grief,
Whether you call me, whether you deny
The crowning vintage and the golden sheaf.
O, April hopes that blossom but to close!
Give me one look, one look and so good-bye,
Red rose.
I shall not go with sighs,
But as full-crowned the warrior leaves the fight,
Love is enough: draw near and behold me
Ye who pass by the way to your rest and your laughter,
And are full of the hope of the dawn coming after;
For the strong of the world have bought me and sold me
And my house is all wasted from threshold to rafter.
--Pass by me, and hearken, and think of me not!
Cry out and come near; for my ears may not hearken,
And my eyes are grown dim as the eyes of the dying.
Is this the grey rack o'er the sun's face a-flying?
Or is it your faces his brightness that darken?
Love is enough: it grew up without heeding
In the days when ye knew not its name nor its measure,
And its leaflets untrodden by the light feet of pleasure
Had no boast of the blossom, no sign of the seeding,
As the morning and evening passed over its treasure.
And what do ye say then?--That Spring long departed
Has brought forth no child to the softness and showers;
--That we slept and we dreamed through the Summer of flowers;
We dreamed of the Winter, and waking dead-hearted
Found Winter upon us and waste of dull hours.
Have mercy on me, my Lord,
For a foe treds o'er me and strives
Mindfully that time and again
I be wearied by all adversity.
Cruelly he treds, proud in his throng,
Stifling me with cruelness undue;
Never's the day I'm free of him,
Nor is my night empty of grim fear.
Yet, be it day, be it night when
Pondrous fear doth oppress, kind Father,
Thou, my Defender, art my hope,
And in each need to the end shall be.
Whilst I, Lord, being assured
In Thy promises, neither blind
Love is enough: have no thought for to-morrow
If ye lie down this even in rest from your pain,
Ye who have paid for your bliss with great sorrow:
For as it was once so it shall be again.
Ye shall cry out for death as ye stretch forth in vain
Feeble hands to the hands that would help but they may not,
Cry out to deaf ears that would hear if they could;
Till again shall the change come, and words your lips say not
Your hearts make all plain in the best wise they would
And the world ye thought waning is glorious and good:
Why flatter thyself, Tyrant,
In ways great in evil?
The Lord's goodness ceases not
Keeping watch on the pious.
Keener yet than the keenest
Blade, thy tongue watches
To generate wild untruth
And plot slander' gainst the good.
Evil's thy love, not sacred virtues;
A lier's thy love, not a truthsayer;
Thine own accursed eye in joy
Gazes at treason most infectious.
For this the Lord God shall fling
Thee from the midst of His people;
Grinding thee to dust, aye, thy home
Dear people, swelled in fool's wisdom
And clinging to error so fanciful,
To the skies, adorned in hosts of fair stars,
Look up - and make bright your dimlit minds!
Know ye that 'tis a wise Lord, an eternal
Lord there with palace midst fiery vault,
Whereon airy voids He's fastened high
And great waters freed of earth's pondrance.
Day, at times fixed, to night's shadow ceding;
Night, at times fixed, ceding unto the day,
Thus do testify with course so concordant
A hundred years and more ago
A little child was born --
To-day, with pomp of martial show,
We hail his natal morn.
Who guessed as that poor infant wept
Upon a woman's knee,
A nation from the centuries stept
As weak and frail as he?
Who saw the future on his brow
Upon that happy morn?
We are a mighty nation now
Because that child was born.
To him, and to his spirit's scope,
Besides a glorious home,
We owe that what we have and hope
Are more than Greece and Rome.
And when our streets are green again
When metalled roads are green
And girls walk barefoot through the weeds
Of Regent Street, Saint Martin's Lane
And children hide in factories
Where burdock blooms and vetch and rust,
And elms and oaks and chestnut trees
Are tall again and hope is lost
When up the Strand the foxes glide
And hedgehogs sniff and wildcats yell
And golden orioles come back
To flash through Barnes and Clerkenwell
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