  Grave maid, surrounded by the austere air Of this delaying spring, what gentle grief, What hovering, mystical melancholy The glaucous silver buds upon the tree, And the light burst of blossom in the bush Are the new year’s evangel: soon the birch Will breathe in heaven with her myriad leaves, And hide the birds’ nests from the tuliped lawn; But thou, with look askance and dreaming eyes, Brooding on something subtly sad and sweet, Art passive, and the world may have her way, Hide the moraine of immemorial days With bines and blossoms, so thine unvaried hour Be not perplexÈd with the change of growth. Within this sombre circle of the hills, Thy girlish eyes have seen the winter’s close, And what may lie beyond, where the sun falls, When the vale fills with rose, and the first star Looks liquidly, thy quiet heart knows not. The permanence of beauty haunts thy dreams, And only as a land beyond desire, Where the fixed glow may stain the vivid flower, Where youth may lose his wings but keep his joy, Does that far slope in the reluctant light Lure thee beyond the barrier of the hills. And often in the morning of the heart, When memories are like crocus-buds in spring, Thou hast up-builded in thy crystal soul Immutable forms of things loved once and lost, Or loved and never gained. Now while the wind From the reflowering bush gushes with perfume, Thou hast a vision of a precinct fair, Daled in the lustrous hills, where the mossed dial Holds the slow shadow narrowed to a line; Where a parterre of tulips hoards the light, Changeless and pure in cups of tranquil gold; Where bee-hives gray against the poplar shade, In a pavilion centred in the close, Four viols build the perfect cube of sound; A path beside the rosy barberry hedge, Leads to the cool of water under spray, Leads to the fountain-echoing ivied wall; Pedestaled there, flecked with the linden shadows, A guardian statue carved in purest stone, Love and Mnemosyne; Mnemosyne Mothering the Truant to an all-cherishing breast, The wells of lore deepening her eyes, would speak— But Love hath laid his hand upon her lips.
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