Page:Mandragora.djvu/66

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PERSEPHONE

AT last!
   After the dumb sick longing;—
At last!
   Filling the ancient urns
With odours and all the air
   With a shudder, a laughter, a cry—
On a wind blown over leagues of tremulous grass,
   Leagues of transparent grass,
Leagues of a million of grass-blades moist with rain,
   Moist with warm rain and fresh from the brown earth—

At last!
   The ravished one, the birth-pale one.
The holy one, the wanton one.
   The Spring returns!

O, youth of the world!
   O, martyred innocents!
Murdered on all these battlefields of ours —
   Fields that are wet with something else than rain —
Is it your blood that lends unto our flowers
   This quivering beauty that redeemeth pain?
For at last!
   The ravished one, the birth-pale one.
The holy one, the wanton one.
   The Spring returns!