# Littell's Living Age/Volume 125/Issue 1612/Vision of Spring in Winter

* From The Fortnightly Review.
* A VISION OF SPRING IN WINTER.
* O tender time that love thinks long to see,
* Sweet foot of spring that with her footfall sows
* Late snowlike flowery leavings of the snows,
* Be not too long irresolute to be;
* O mother-month, where have they hidden thee?
* Out of the pale time of the ilowerless rose
* I reach my heart out toward the springtime lands,
* I stretch my spirit forth to the fair hours,
* The purplest of the prime;
* I lean my soul down over them, with hands
* Made wide to take the ghostly growths of flowers;
* I send my love back to the lovely time.
* Where has the greenwood hid thy gracious head?
* Veiled with What visions while the grey world grieves,
* Or muffled with what shadows of green leaves.
* What warm intangible green shadows spread
* To sweeten the sweet twilight for thy bed?
* What sleep enchants thee? what delight deceives?
* Where the deep dreamlike dew before the dawn
* Feels not the fingers of the sunlight yet
* His silver web unweave,
* Thy footless ghost on some unfooted lawn
* Whose air the unrisen sunbeams fear to fret
* Lives a ghost's life of daylong dawn and eve.
* Sunrise it sees not, neither set of star.
* Large nightfall, nor imperial plenilune.
* Nor strong sweet shape of the full-breasted noon;
* But where the silver-sandalled shadows are,
* Too soft for arrows of the sun to mar,
* Moves with the mild gait of an ungrown moon;
* Hard overhead the half-lit crescent swims,
* The tender-coloured night draws hardly breath.
* The light is listening;
* They watch the dawn of slender-shapen limbs,
* Virginal, born again of doubtful death,
* Chill foster-father of the weanling spring.
* As sweet desire of day before the day,
* As dreams of love before the true love born,
* From the outer edge of winter overworn
* The ghost arisen of May before the May
* Takes through dim air her unawakened way,
* The gracious ghost of morning risen ere morn.
* With little unblown breasts and child-eyed looks
* Following, the very maid, the girl-child spring,
* Lifts windward her bright brows,
* Dips her light feet in warm and moving brooks,
* And kindles with her own mouth's colouring
* The fearful firstlings of the plumeless boughs.
* I seek thee sleeping, and awhile I see,
* Fair face that art not, how thy maiden breath
* Shall put at last the deadly days to death
* And fill the fields and fire the woods with thee
* And seaward hollows where my feet would be
* When heaven shall hear the word that April saith
* To change the cold heart of the weary time,
* To stir and soften all the time to tears.
* Tears joyfuller than mirth;
* As even to May's clear height the young days climb
* With feet not swifter than those fair first years
* Whose flowers revive not with thy flowers on earth.
* I would not bid thee, though I might, give back
* One good thing youth has given and borne away;
* I crave not any comfort of the day
* That is not, nor on time's retrodden track
* Would turn to meet the white-robed hours or black
* That long since left me on their mortal way;
* Nor light nor love that has been, nor the breath
* That comes with morning from the sun to be
* And sets light hope on fire;
* No fruit, no flower thought once too fair for death,
* No flower nor hour once fallen from life's green tree,
* No leaf once plucked or once-fulfilled desire.
* The morning song beneath the stars that fled
* With twilight through the moonless mountain air,
* While youth with burning lips and wreathless hair
* Sang toward the sun that was to crown his head.
* Rising; the hopes that triumphed and fell dead,
* The sweet swift eyes and songs of hours that were;
* These may'st thou not give back forever; these.
* As at the sea's heart all her wrecks lie waste.
* Lie deeper than the sea;
* But flowers thou may'st, and winds, and hours of ease,
* And all its April to the world thou may'st
* Give back, and half my April back to me.
* Algernon Charles Swinburne.