The first warm buds that break their covers, The first young twigs that burst in green, The first blade that the sun discovers, Starting the loosened earth between. The pale soft sky, so clear and tender, With little clouds that break and fly; The crocus, earliest pretender To the low breezes passing by; The chirp and twitter of brown builders, A couple in a tree, at least; The watchful wisdom of the elders For callow younglings in the nest; The flush of branches with fair blossoms, The deepening of the faint green boughs, As leaf by leaf the crown grows fuller That binds the young Spring’s rosy brows; New promise every day of sweetness, The next bright dawn is sure to bring; Slow breaking into green completeness, Fresh rapture of the early Spring! _May, 1876._ Prophecies of Summer. I found a wee leaf in the cleft Where the half-melted ice had left A sunny corner, moist and warm, For it to bud, beyond all harm. The wet, brown sod, Long horned with ice, had slowly grown So soft, the tender seedling blown By Autumn winds, in earliest Spring Sent through the sun-warmed covering, Its little leaf to God. I found it there, beneath a ledge, The dawning Spring time’s fairest pledge, And to my mind it dimly brought The sudden, joyous, leafy thought Of Summer-time. I plucked it from the sheltered cleft Which the more kindly ice had left. Within my hand to drop and die, But for its sweet suggestions, I Revive it in a rhyme. _1876._ [Illustration] Song. O Love, where are the hours fled, The hours of our young delight? Are they forever gone and dead, Or only vanished out of sight? O can it be that we shall live To know once more the joys gone by, To feel the old, deep love revive, And smile again before we die? Could I but fancy it might be, Could I the past bring back again, And for one moment, holding thee, Forget the present and its pain! O Love, those hours are past away Beyond our longing and our sighs-- Perhaps the Angels, some bright day, Will give them back in Paradise! _August, 1876._ [Illustration] Heaven.