Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition
Hymn to Spring (Author: Patrick Augustine Sheehan)
p.217
- O EARTH, awake from thy slumbers!
She Cometh to thee o'er the hills.
From the chambers of the south wind,
From glad reaches of the sea.
She hath breathed on brown mosses,
And, lo! a star shines there;
She had touched the gnarled branches —
They are pearled and gemmed with buds.
And where black boles strike deeply,
A coronal of purple flowers,
Shy, and sweet, and incense-breathing.
Leaps to the laugh of the south wind.
Shakes the warm dew from their cheeks.
And sets birds and men dreaming
Of days gone by, and of childhood.
Shy, and sweet, and love-enchanted.
O Earth, awake from thy slumbers!
Spring Cometh to thee.
- Hearken, O Earth! to thy Psalmist,
Spring singeth to thee!
From the tawny throats of bird-minstrels,
Muffled and shielded from cold,
Lest one faintest chord should cipher,
Or one sweetest melody falter
In her psalms and wood-litanies;
From the gurgle and murmur of streamlets,
That spring into laughter and song
Through the broken shackles of ice-floes.
And the curved domes of the snows;
From the clapping of hands in the woodlands,
And the buds leaning o'er to each other
To whisper the glad gratulations.
Or echo the glad hallelujahs:
In symphonies soft and majestic.
In cadenced and resonant anthems,
And wild and unmeasured voluntaries.
Listen, O Earth! to thy Psalmist:
Spring singeth to thee!
- Arise, O Earth, for thy Priestess,
Spring, cometh to thee!
She hath put on the mitre of gladness.
And her vestments are weighted with flowers, —
God's golden embroidery.
Where her sandalled feet touch the meadows,
A print of gold and of saffron
Lies beneath the grasses embedded.
Crocus, and lily, and violet,
The shy, sweet children of darkness,
Peep through the brown moist ridges;
Careless, but living and breathing.
The bells of the lilac tremble;
And up from the steaming grasses,
The hyacinth poureth his incense
At the feet of his priestess and queen.
And she, with her solemn worship
Of prayer, and of praise, and the burning
Of perfumed woods, and the spices
That breathe on the tremulous air.
Grows strong, as her King in the heavens
Widens the arch of his circuit,
And pours the life from his bosom,
Till the shy, meek maiden of springtime,
The gentle Sibyl and psalmist.
Waxes ruddy and brown in the sunshine.
And from priestess of birds and of streams.
Grows to the stature of strength and of scorn,
Dishevelled, and splashed with the blood of the
wine-press, —
The flame-haired Moenad,
The wild-eyed Bacchante,
Of summer and fruit and song.