Hail, truant with song-troubled breast--
Thou welcome and bewildering guest!
Blithe troubadour, whose laughing note
Brings Spring into a poet's throat,--
Flute, feathered joy! thy painted bill
Foretells the daffodil.
Enchanter, 'gainst the evening star
Singing to worlds where dreamers are,
That makes upon the leafless bough
A solitary vernal vow--
Sing, lyric soul! within thy song
The love that lures the rose along!
The snowdrop, hearing, in the dell
Doth tremble for its virgin bell;
The crocus feels within its frame
The magic of its folded flame;
And many a listening patience lies
And pushes toward its paradise.
Young love again on golden gales
Scents hawthorn blown down happy dales;
The phantom cuckoo calls forlorn
From limits of the haunted morn;--
Sing, elfin heart! thy notes to me
Are bells that ring in Faery!
Again the world is young, is young,
And silence takes a silver tongue;
The echoes catch the lyric mood
Of laughing children in the wood:
Blithe April trips in winter's way
And nature, wondering, dreams of May.
Sing on, thou dusky fount of life!
God love thee for a merry sprite!
Sing on! for though the sun be coy
I sense with thee a budding joy,
And all my heart with ranging rhyme
Is poet for the prime!