Page:Poems that every child should know (ed. Burt, 1904).djvu/297

 PART VI.

The Voice of Spring.

, I come! ye have called me long;

I come o'er the mountains, with light and song.

Ye may trace my step o'er the waking earth

By the winds which tell of the violet's birth,

By the primrose stars in the shadowy grass,

By the green leaves opening as I pass.

I have breathed on the South, and the chestnut flowers

By thousands have burst from the forest bowers,

And the ancient graves and the fallen fanes

Are veiled with wreaths on Italian plains;

But it is not for me, in my hour of bloom,

To speak of the ruin or the tomb!

I have looked o'er the hills of the stormy North,

And the larch has hung all his tassels forth;

The fisher is out on the sunny sea,

And the reindeer bounds o'er the pastures free,

And the pine has a fringe of softer green,

And the moss looks bright, where my step has been.