Now Spring returns with leaf and blade,
Some seek the garden, some the glade;
And all to Nature turn, but I
To the fresh fields of Poetry,
Sweet are the first green leaves, and sweet
The scents, and genial the first heat;
And backed by pine or cypress glooms
How rich the rhododendron blooms!
Yet rich or sweet as these appear,
They were as wonderful last year;
And all as then move without pause
Through the same course by the same laws.
The flowers I meet in song are new;
None shall forecast their shape or hue;
To none of your dull round belong
The seasons that unfold in song.
The trees that sung in verse I find
Are each its own, an unknown, kind;
But best in all, tree, season, flower,
Is, there’s no limit to their power.
Earth’s tulip in her splendours dressed
Is yet a tulip at the best;
Or shall a grove heal human grief?
One leaf is like another leaf.
Mays eight and thirty have I known
Thrill each my senses, till ’twas flown;
Yet doubt if one, that pranked the ground,
Left my soul happier than it found.
The bluebell mist in the deep wood
Has often made me think life good;
Blue still they crowd by many a tree,
But I see no less misery.
In lilac blooms put not your trust;
Heavenly their smell is, but they rust;
Nor let laburnums gain great hold
On your deep heart with their brief gold.
Ten million beech-trees have I seen
Pnt forth ten thousand leaves of green;
But never yet, in grove or glade,
Found I the leaf that would not fade.
The gardens of the Muse remain,
Where I can come, and come again;
The Fancy’s flowers are ever bright,
Faint not at noon, close not at night.
What was once, is still beautiful;
This can I through all seasons cull;
And culled once, will continue dewed,
Or if it droop can be renewed.
The woods of song endure and change;
Those I love best I still find strange,
And therefore never quite despair
The cure of life to light on there.
For when the snow lay thick around,
And there was neither tint nor sound,
And Fate’s will was not as my will,
I thought last winter, and think still.
The hope that fails not, the one scent
That leaves the spiritual sense content,
The fruit that may redeem the fall,
Shall be plucked here, or not at all.
(Archibald Young Campbell)
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Based on Topics: Life Poems, Night Poems, Sadness Poems, Nature Poems, Sense & Perception Poems, Flowers Poems, Hope Poems, Beauty Poems, Gold Poems, Power Poems, Literature PoemsBased on Keywords: mays, rhododendron, bluebell, dewed, pranked, laburnums, beech-trees