In the exuberance of hope and life, When one is play'd on like an instrument By passion, and plain faces are divine; When one holds tenure in the evening star, We love the pensiveness of autumn air, The songless fields, brown stubbles, hectic woods: For as a prince may in his splendour sigh, Because the splendours are his common wear, Youth pines within the sameness of delight: And the all-trying spirit, uncontent With aught that can be fully known, beguiles Itself with melancholy images, Sits down at gloomy banquets, broods o'er graves, Tries unknown sorrow's edge as curiously (And not without a strange prophetic thrill) As one might try a sword's, and makes itself The Epicurus of fantastic griefs. But when the blood chills and the years go by, As we resemble autumn more, the more We love the resurrection time of spring. And spring is now around me. Snowdrops came; Crocuses gleam'd along the garden walk Like footlights on the stage. But these are gone. And now before my door the poplar burns, A torch enkindled at an emerald fire. The flowering currant is a rosy cloud; One daffodil is hooded, one full blown: The sunny mavis from the tree top sings; Within the flying sunlights twinkling troops Of chaffinches jerk here and there; beneath The shrubbery the blackbird runs, then flits, With chattering cry: demure at ploughman's heel, Within the red-drawn furrow, stalks the rook, A pale metallic glister on his back; And, like a singing arrow upwards shot Far out of sight, the lark is in the blue. This morning, when the stormy front of March, Is mask'd with June, and has as sweet a breath, And sparrows fly with straws, and in the elms Rooks flap and caw, then stream off to the fields, And thence returning, flap and caw again, I gaze in idle pleasantness of mood, Far down upon the harbour and the sea-- The smoking steamer half-way 'cross the Firth Shrank to a beetle's size, the dark-brown sails Of scatter'd fishing-boats, and still beyond, Seen dimly through a veil of tender haze, The coast of Fife endorsed with ancient towns,-- As quaint and strange to-day as when the queen, In whose smile lay the headsman's glittering axe, Beheld them from her tower of Holyrood, And sigh'd for fruitful France, and turning, cower'd From the lank shadow, Darnley, at her side.