All Round the Year

Excerpt

All round the year the changing suns and rains

Beat on men’s work—to wreck and to decay—

But nature builds more perfectly than they,

Her changing unchanged sea resists, remains.

All round the year new flowers spring up to shew

How gloriously life is more strong than death;

And in our hearts are seeds of love and faith,

Ah, sun and showers, be kind, and let them grow.

RESURGAM.

Swift pass the hours, or lengthened by our hearts

Uncertain measurement of time,

And when we dream the year has just awoke,

We wake to find her in her prime.

We sadden with the dying Autumn leaves,

Yet falling seeds their promise bring;

Through long dark Winter days we only wait

A resurrection in the coming Spring.

Within each hour the precious minutes lie

Like seeds awaiting Spring’s first breath,

God’s harvest-time shall show us if they bear

The flowers of life or death.

Caris Brooke.

Cold is the earth, the flowers below,

Fearful of Winter’s hand, lie curled;

But Spring will come again you know,

And glorify the world.

Dark is the night, no stars or moon;

But at its blackest night is done;

All after hastens to the noon,

The triumph of the sun!

And life is short, and love is brief—

Be patient! There will be—they say

New life, divine beyond belief,

Somewhere, somehow, some day!

E. Nesbit.

MARCH VIOLETS.

This busy, dusty wind that blows

Along the cruel streets,

Right to the heart of violets goes,

And robs them of their sweets.

And as along the cruel street

The keen wind robs the flowers,

So the cold kindness that we meet

Blights these poor hearts of ours.

But if you tend with warmth, you know,

Your violets, they give

Sweet scent again, as if to show

How glad they are to live.

We think if some one loved us too

Our hearts would break to prove

By all that we could say or do,

How glad we were to love!

E. Nesbit.

Dream footsteps wandering past us in our sleep,

A restless presence stirring with the light,

The cry of waters where the snow was white,

A violet’s whisper where dead leaves lay deep;

The dim wood’s music makes a sudden leap,

Broken notes, blending in a wild delight,

And lo! the whole world changes in our sight.

Promise is ended—we must turn and reap

Fulfilment, for the Spring with all her wealth

Is with us, and compels us to her will.

Yet if the sun-dawn we should shun by stealth

Yearning for shadows and the darkened hours,

Sweet Lord, be pitiful, remembering still

One lieth low beneath the budding flowers.

Caris Brooke.

Never a hand on the cottage door

To call me forth in the evening light,

My days grow old, and I watch no more

The cowslips gold and the may-buds white.

Primroses nestle beneath the hedge

Where we kissed and wept and said good-bye—

For twenty years I have watched them bud,

For twenty years I have seen them die.

Yet now that the Spring once more has turned

The sea to silver, the earth to gold,

I shall watch no more from the primrose lane,

Where I waited and watched in the days of old.

Yet the children weave me their daisy chains,

The woodland music is sweet and clear,

Though the footsteps have wandered beyond recall,

That I watched and waited so long to hear...!