Think they so to convince the heart with words
Like those, to mesh it with a logic meet
For bloodless ends? What though the winds of May
Call to the springing rootlets, lure the bud
From the rose-stem, and chase the resinous sap
From the pine's trunk to branch and topmost twig--
Who yields to such delusion? Does the spring
Forget November's hecatombs, the last
Convulsion of the leaf, the gale-torn limbs
Of trees scarred to the death, the flowers that danced
Upon the fields scythed by the autumn's hands.
The writhen spectres of earth's quick decay
Flashed out upon the winds? All these as dust
Around the season's tombs--dust-heaps, no more;
As sands that eddy in the desert, these:
For these no resurrection. What amends
Does summer make for winter's numbing stroke?
It's death he gives, not slumber. His pale forms
Breathe not again, and eyelids that have closed
On the congealing air reflect no more
The warm glance of the sun. The swallows build
Their nests once more within the eaves; the thrush,
The red-breast and the lark cover again
Their young in bush and tree and meadow-grain--
_They_ have not died. But weak ones that, impaled
Upon the thorn, screamed out their notes of pain,
Or dashed, wing-broken, by the wildering blast,
Fell when their strength had failed them on far plains,
On treeless hills, or dazed in homeward flight,
Fluttered and sank in furrows of the sea--
_Their_ song has ended; _they_ return no more.