p is the joy that revives for the soul to recover
Yearly, beholden of hope and of memory in sunshine and rain.

III

Wonder and love stand silent, stricken at heart and stilled.
But yet is the cup of delight and of worship unpledged and
unfilled.
A handsbreadth hence leaps up, laughs out as an angel crowned,
A strong full fountain of flowers overflowing above and around.
The boughs and the blossoms in triumph salute with adoring mirth
The womb that bare them, the glad green mother, the sunbright
earth.
Downward sweeping, as song subsides into silence, none
May hear what sound is the word's they speak to the brooding sun.
None that hearken may hear: man may but pass and adore,
And humble his heart in thanksgiving for joy that is now no more.
And sudden, afront and ahead of him, joy is alive and aflame
On the shrine whose incense is given of the godhead, again the
same.

Pale and pure as a maiden secluded in secret and cherished with
fear,
One sweet glad hawthorn smiles as it shrinks under shelter,
screened
By two strong brethren whose bounteous blossom outsoars it, year
after year,
While earth still cleaves to the live spring's breast as a babe
unweaned.
Never was amaranth fairer in fields where heroes of old found rest,
Never was asphodel sweeter: but here they endure not long,
Though ever the sight that salutes them again and adores them
awhile is blest,
And the heart is a hymn, and the sense is a soul, and the soul is
a song.
Alone on a dyke's trenched edge, and afar from the blossoming
wildwood's verge,
Laughs and lightens a sister, triumphal in love-lit pride;
Clothed round with the sun, and inviolate: her blossoms exult as
the springtide surge,
When the wind and the dawn enkindle the snows of the shoreward
tide.

Hardly the worship of old that rejoiced as it knelt in the vision
Shown of the God new-born whose breath is the spirit of spring
Hailed ever with love more strong and defiant of death's derision
A joy more perfect than here we mourn for as May takes wing.
Time gives it and takes it again and restores it: the glory, the
wonder,
The triumph of lustrous blossom that makes of the