And sad is my song, when I begin to sing, As I sit in the sunshine this merry spring: Like a withered leaf I cling To the white oak-bough, while the wood doth ring. Spring is coming now, the sun again is gay; Each day like a last spring's happy day.'-- Thus sang he; then from his spray He saw me listening and flew away. 11 I never shall love the snow again Since Maurice died: With corniced drift it blocked the lane And sheeted in a desolate plain The country side. The trees with silvery rime bedight Their branches bare. By day no sun appeared; by night The hidden moon shed thievish light In the misty air. We fed the birds that flew around In flocks to be fed: No shelter in holly or brake they found. The speckled thrush on the frozen ground Lay frozen and dead. We skated on stream and pond; we cut The crinching snow To Doric temple or Arctic hut; We laughed and sang at nightfall, shut By the fireside glow. Yet grudged we our keen delights before Maurice should come. We said, In-door or out-of-door We shall love life for a month or more, When he is home. They brought him home; 'twas two days late For Christmas day: Wrapped in white, in solemn state, A flower in his hand, all still and straight Our Maurice lay. And two days ere the year outgave We laid him low. The best of us truly were not brave, When we laid Maurice down in his grave Under the snow. 12 NIGHTINGALES Beautiful must be the mountains whence ye come, And bright in the fruitful valleys the streams, wherefrom Ye learn your song: Where are those starry woods? O might I wander there, Among the flowers, which in that heavenly air Bloom the year long! Nay, barren are those mountains and spent the streams: Our song is the voice of desire, that haunts our dreams, A throe of the heart, Whose pining visions dim, forbidden hopes profound, No dying cadence nor long sigh can sound, For all our art. Alone, aloud in the raptured ear of men We pour our dark nocturnal secret; and then, As night is withdrawn From these sweet-springing meads and bursting boughs of May, Dream, while the innumerable choir of day Welcome the dawn. 13 A song of my heart, as the sun peered o'er the sea, Was born at morning to me: And out of my treasure-house it chose A melody, that arose Of all fair sounds that I love, remembered together In one; and I knew not whether From waves of rustling wheat it was, Recoveringly that pass: