Poems (Hale)/Spring

by Mary Whitwell Hale

For works with similar titles, see Spring.

SPRING.

  Welcome! O blessed Spring!
  Grateful to thee I sing,
Whose voice can bid our secret anguish cease.
  Visit each lonely shrine
  With music most divine:
Whisper of sweetest hope and gentlest peace.

  Yet many a heart in tears,
  Thine airy footstep hears.
Thoughts of long-vanished joys come back with thee;
  And from the soul's deep cells
  A strain of sadness swells,
To mingle with thy breathing melody.

  Above their lowly dead,
  The silent tear is shed,
As fall the silvery dews on thy young flowers.
  Nor will thy angel smile
  Their secret grief beguile,
Nor chase the shadows from their weary hours.

  But with a mystic voice,
  That bids my soul rejoice,
Thou visitest my path by night and day.
  How blessed is thy light,
  Which beams o'er death's dark night,
And sheds a glory o'er earth's pilgrim way!

  Thanks that the sweet perfume
  Of nature's radiant bloom
Comes yet again new beauty to impart.
  Thanks that I hear again
  The soft and soothing strain,
Whose heaven-taught harmonies make glad my heart.

  Yet shall the spirit raise
  A holier song of praise,
For gifts more fair are borne upon thy wing,—
  Breathings of that bright clime
  Beyond the touch of time,
Where blooms and blossoms an eternal Spring.

  Thy glory droops and dies;
  But on its grave there lies
A sunbeam from the skies that have no night.
  Earth's bloom shall melt away,
  Yet shall its fading ray
Brighten again in realms of endless light.