With a difference —Hamlet.

Again the bloom, the northward flight, 
The fount freed at its silver height, 
And down the deep woods to the lowest, 
The fragrant shadows scarred with light.

O inescapable joy of spring! 
For thee the world shall leap and sing;
But by her darkened door thou goest 
Forever as a spectral thing.

When the green lies over the earth, my dear,
A mantle of witching grace,
When the smile and the tear of the young child year
Dimple across its face,
And then flee, when the wind all day is sweet
With the breath of growing things,
When the wooing bird lights on restless feet
And chirrups and trills and sings
                  To his lady-love
                  In the green above,
Then oh! my dear, when the youth’s in the year,
Yours is the face that I long to have near,
                  Yours is the face, my dear.

But the green is hiding your curls, my dear,
Your curls so shining and sweet;
And the gold-hearted daisies this many a year
Have bloomed and bloomed at your feet,
And the little birds just above your head
With their voices hushed, my dear,
For you have sung and have prayed and have pled
                  This many, many a year.

                  And the blossoms fall,
                  On the garden wall,
And drift like snow on the green below.
                  But the sharp thorn grows
                  On the budding rose,
And my heart no more leaps at the sunset glow.
For oh! my dear, when the youth’s in the year,
Yours is the face that I long to have near,
Yours is the face, my dear.

^{translated from the Hebrew by Emma Lazarus}

                          I.

Now the dreary winter’s over, 
    Fled with him are grief and pain, 
When the trees their bloom recover, 
    Then the soul is born again. 

Spikenard blossoms shaking, 
    Perfume all the air,
And in bud and flower breaking, 
    Stands my garden fair. 
While with swelling gladness blest, 
Heaves my friend’s rejoicing breast. 
Oh, come home, lost friend of mine. 
Scared from out my tent and land. 
    Drink from me the spicy wine, 
    Milk and must from out my hand. 

Cares which hovered round my brow, 
Vanish, while the garden now
Girds itself with myrtle hedges, 
               Bright-hued edges 
               Round it lie. 
                   Suddenly 
All my sorrows die. 
See the breathing myrrh-trees blow, 
    Aromatic airs enfold me. 
While the splendor and the glow 
    Of the walnut-branches hold me. 

And a balsam-breath is flowing, 
    Through the leafy shadows green, 
On the left the cassia’s growing,
    On the right the aloe’s seen. 
Lo, the clear cup crystalline, 
    In itself a gem of art, 
Ruby-red foams up with wine, 
Sparking rich with froth and bubble. 
I forget the want and trouble, 
          Buried deep within  my heart. 

Where is he who lingered here, 
But a little while agone? 
From my homestead he has flown, 
From the city sped alone, 
Dwelling in the forest drear. 
Oh come again, to those who wait thee long,
And who will greet thee with a choral song! 
Beloved, kindle bright 
Once more thine everlasting light. 
Through three, oh cherub with protecting wings, 
My glory out of darkness springs. 

                          II. 

Crocus and spikenard blossom on my lawn, 
The brier fades, the thistle is withdrawn.
Behold, where glass-clear brooks are flowing, 
The splendor of the myrtle blowing! 
The garden-tree has doffed her widow’s veil,
And shines in festal garb, in verdue pale.
       The turtle-dove is cooing, hark! 
       Is that the warble of the lark!
Unto their perches they return again. 
Oh brothers, carol forth your joyous strain, 
Pour out full-throated ecstasy of mirth, 
Proclaiming the Lord’s glory to the earth. 
       One with a low, sweet song, 
       One echoing loud and long, 
Chanting the music of a spirit strong. 

In varied tins the landscape glows. 
In rich array appears the rose. 
While the pomegranate’s wreath of green,
The gauzy red and snow-white blossoms screen. 
Who loves it, now rejoices for its sake,
And those are glad who sleep, and those who wake. 
When cool-breathed evening visiteth the world, 
In flower and leaf the beaded dew is pearled, 
       Reviving all that droops at length, 
       and to the languid giving strength. 

Now in the east the shining light behold! 
The sun has oped a lustrous path of gold. 
Within my narrow garden’s greenery, 
Short forth a branch, sprang to a splendid tree, 
Then in mine ear the joyous words did ring,
“From Jesse’s root a verdant branch shall spring.”
My Friend has cast His eyes upon my grief, 
According to His mercy, sends relief. 
Hark! the redemption hour’s resounding stroke, 
For him who bore with patient heart the yoke! 

As summer enters this land of rivers and lakes,
    I find myself idle in my thatched hut.
Friendly waves that wash the shores
    are sent only by the gentle breeze.
This body’s coolness is also a debt
    we owe to our great king.

Sounds of the seas grow fainter,
   Sounds of the sands have sped; 
The sweep of gales,
The far white sails, 
   Are silent, spent and dead. 

Sounds of the days of summer
   Murmur and die away, 
And distance hides
The long, low tides, 
  As night shuts out the day. 

A little while spring will claim its own,
In all the land around for mile on mile
Tender grass will hide the rugged stone.
My still heart will sing a little while.

And men will never think this wilderness
Was barren once when grass is over all,
Hearing laughter they may never guess
My heart has known its winter and carried gall.

O magical the winter night! Illusory this stretch
Of unimaginable grays; so shadowy a sketch
Only the fading inks of spirit artistry can etch.

Here is nor dawn nor eventide nor any light we know,
This ghostly incandescence and unearthly afterglow,
This far-spread conflagration of the fields of snow

That pales the clouds, snow-laden, and blanches all the night,
As though in place of moon and stars some spectral satellite
Cast glamor on the earth and floods of violet light.

The wraith-like landscape glimmers, valley, lake and hill,
Unutterably patient! Intolerably still!
No inclination of a leaf nor songster’s trill.

. . . So could one stand an hour, a day, a century,
Breathless . . . What frozen silence! What immobility!
As of some gray unfinished world in age-long reverie.

O whither have you vanished, treading the leaves of fall,
Bright spirit of the summer, leaving the scene in thrall
To silence? To what springtime, far, far beyond recall?

What far retreat of being, what ebbing of the flood
Of life to bless far landscapes anew with leaf and bud
Has left prospect passionless and charmed this stricken wood?

. . .  And yet from depths how distant, that tide of green shall rise,
And that bright spirit come again with April in her eyes,
And winter’s pale prostrations be but phantom memories.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
  Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
  With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
  And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
    To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
  With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
    For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
  Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
  Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
  Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
    Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
  Steady thy laden head across a brook;
  Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
    Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
  Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
  And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
  Among the river sallows, borne aloft
    Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
  Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
  The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,
    And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Mother gave birth to me in the fall 
in the midst of grieving trees and withering leaves. 
Winter came home right after 
accompanied by winds of solitude. 
My earliest memories revolved around cold weather 
yet I remember meeting with summer  
before ever blowing my first candle. 
I saw these same trees shimmer in full bloom. 
I saw their branches clothed in vivid green. 

Early on,  
I learned not to shed a tear when autumn leaves 
for I know that summer comes home through the shiver. 

It will be Summer eventually —
Ladies with parasols,
Sauntering gentlemen with canes,
And little girls with dolls

Will tint the pallid landscape
As’t were a bright bouquet,
Though drifted deep in Parian
The village lies to-day.

The lilacs, bending many a year,
Will sway with purple load ;
The bees will not despise the tune
Their forefathers have hummed ;

The wild rose redden in the bog,
The aster on the hill
Her everlasting fashion set,
And covenant gentians frill,

Till Summer folds her miracle
As women do their gown,
Or priests adjust the symbols
When Sacrament is done.

I’m sorry for the Dead to-day,
It’s such congenial times
Old neighbors have at fences
At time o’ year for hay —

When broad sun-burned acquaintances
Discourse between the toil
And laugh, a homely species,
That makes the meadows smile.

It seems so straight to lie away
From all the noise of fields,
The busy carts, the fragrant cocks,
The mower’s meter steals

A trouble, lest they’re homesick, —
Those farmers and their wives,
Set separate from the farming
And all the neighbors’ lives.

I wonder if the sepulchre
Is not a lonesome way,
When and boys, and larks and June
Go down the fields to hay !

To disappear enhances ;
The man who runs away
Is tinctured for an instant
With Immortality.

But yesterday a vagrant,
Today in memory lain
With superstitious merit
We tamper with again.

But never far as Honour
Removes the paltry One,
And impotent to cherish
We hasten to adorn.

Of Death the sharpest function,
That, just as a we discern,
The Excellence defies us ;
Securest gathered then

The fruit perverse to plucking,
But leaning to the sight
With the ecstatic limit
Of unobtained Delight.