While in this delicious weather The apple ripens row on row, I see the footsteps of the heather Purpling ledges: to and fro In the wind the restless swallows Turn and twitter; on the crag The ash, with all her scarlet berries, Dances o'er a burn that hurries Foamily from jag to jag: Now it babbles over shallows Where great scales of sunlight flicker; Narrow'd 'gainst the bank it quicker Runs in many a rippled ridge; Anon in purple pools and hollows It slumbers: and beyond the bridge, On which a troop of savage children clamber, A sudden ray comes out And scuds a startled trout O'er golden stones, through chasms brilliant amber. To-day one half remembers With a sigh, In the yellow-moon'd Septembers Long gone by, Many a solitary stroll With an ever-flowing soul When the moonbeam, falling white On the wheat fields, was delight; When the whisper of the river Was a thing to list for ever; When the call of lonely bird Deeper than all music stirr'd; When the restless spirit shook O'er some prophesying book, In whose pages dwelt the hum Of a life that was to come; When I, in a young man's fashion, Long'd for some excess of passion-- Melancholy, glory, pleasure, Heap'd up to a lover's measure; For some unknown experience To unlock this mortal fence, And let the coop'd-up spirit range A world of wonder, sweet and strange: And thought, O joy all joys above! Experience would be faced like Love. When I dream'd that youth would be Blossom'd like an apple-tree, The fancy in extremest age Would dwell within the spirit sage. Like the wall-flower on the ruin, With its smile at Time's undoing, Like the wall-flower on the ruin, The brighter from the wreck it grew in. Ah, how dearly one remembers Memory-embalm'd Septembers! But I start, as well I may, I have wasted half a day. The west is red above the sun, And my task work unbegun. Nature will not hold a truce With a beauty without use: Spring, though blithe and ebonair, Ripens plum and ripens pear. O mellow, mellow orchard bough! O yellow, yellow wheaten plain! Soon will reaper wipe his brow, Gleaner glean her latest grain, October, like a gipsy bold, Pick the berries in the lane, And November, woodman old, With fagots gather'd 'gainst the cold, Trudge through wind and rain. WARDIE--SPRING-TIME.