outed it over the bar_;
_First-footing the dawns_, _they flourished_,
_And flamed with the morning star_.

_My songs are now of the sunset_:
_Their brows are touched with light_,
_But their feet are lost in the shadows_
_And wet with the dews of night_.

_Yet for the joy in their making_
_Take them_, _O fond and true_,
_And for his sake who made them_
_Let them be dear to You_.

PRAELUDIUM

_Largo espressivo_

In sumptuous chords, and strange,
Through rich yet poignant harmonies:
Subtle and strong browns, reds
Magnificent with death and the pride of death,
Thin, clamant greens
And delicate yellows that exhaust
The exquisite chromatics of decay:
From ruining gardens, from reluctant woods--
Dear, multitudinously reluctant woods!--
And sering margents, forced
To be lean and bare and perished grace by grace,
And flower by flower discharmed,
Comes, to a purpose none,
Not even the Scorner, which is the Fool, can blink,
The dead-march of the year.

Dead things and dying! Now the long-laboured soul
Listens, and pines. But never a note of hope
Sounds: whether in those high,
Transcending unisons of resignation
That speed the sovran sun,
As he goes southing, weakening, minishing,
Almighty in obedience; or in those
Small, sorrowful colloquies
Of bronze and russet and gold,
Colour with colour, dying things with dead,
That break along this visual orchestra:
As in that other one, the audible,
Horn answers horn, hautboy and violin
Talk, and the 'cello calls the clarionet
And flute, and the poor heart is glad.
There is no hope in these--only despair.

Then, destiny in act, ensues
That most tremendous passage in the score:
When hangman rains and winds have wrought
Their worst, and, the brave lights gone down,
The low strings, the brute brass, the sullen drums
Sob, grovel, and curse themselves
Silent. . . .
But on the spirit of Man
And on the heart of the World there falls
A strange, half-desperate peace:
A war-worn, militant, gray jubilance
In the unkind, implacable tyranny
Of Winter, the obscene,
Old, crapulous Regent, who in his loins--
O, who but feels he carries in his loins
The wild, sweet-blooded, wonderful harlot, Spring?

I.

Low--low
Over a perishing after-glow,
A thin, red shred of moon
Trailed. In the windless air
The poplars all ranked lean and chill.
The smell of winter loitered there,
And the Year's heart felt still.
Yet not so far away
Seemed the