“I was all Spring, for in my being dwelt
    Eternal youth, where flowers are the fruit;
  Full feeling was the thought of what was felt,
    Its music was the meaning of the lute;
  But heaven and earth such life will still deny,
  For earth, divorced from heaven, still asks the question Why?

  “Upon the highest mountains my young feet
    Ached, that no pinions from their lightness grew,
  My starlike eyes the stars would fondly greet,
    Yet win no greeting from the circling blue;
  Fair, self-subsistent each in its own sphere,
    They had no care that there was none for me;
  Alike to them that I was far or near,
    Alike to them time and eternity.

  “But from the violet of lower air
    Sometimes an answer to my wishing came;
  Those lightning-births my nature seemed to share,
    They told the secrets of its fiery frame,
  The sudden messengers of hate and love,
  The thunderbolts that arm the hand of Jove,
  And strike sometimes the sacred spire, and strike the sacred grove.

  “Come in a moment, in a moment gone,
  They answered me, then left me still more lone;
  They told me that the thought which ruled the world
  As yet no sail upon its course had furled,
  That the creation was but just begun,
  New leaves still leaving from the primal one,
  But spoke not of the goal to which my rapid wheels would run.

  “Still, still my eyes, though tearfully, I strained
  To the far future which my heart contained,
  And no dull doubt my proper hope profaned.

  “At last, O bliss! thy living form I spied,
    Then a mere speck upon a distant sky;
  Yet my keen glance discerned its noble pride,
    And the full answer of that sun-filled eye;
  I knew it was the wing that must upbear
    My earthlier form into the realms of air.

  “Thou knowest how we gained that beauteous height,
  Where dwells the monarch, of the sons of light;
  Thou knowest he declared us two to be
  The chosen servants of his ministry,
  Thou as his messenger, a sacred sign
  Of conquest, or, with omen more benign,
  To give its due weight to the righteous cause,
  To express the verdict of Olympian laws.

  “And I to wait upon the lonely spring,
    Which slakes the thirst of bards to whom ’t is given
  The destined dues of hopes divine to sing,
    And weave the needed chain to bind to heaven. 
  Only from such could be obtained a draught
  For him who in his early home from Jove’s own cup has quaffed

  “To wait, to wait, but not to wait too long. 
  Till heavy grows the burden of a song;
  O bird! too long hast thou been gone to-day,
  My feet are weary of their frequent way,
  The spell that opes the spring my tongue no more can say.

  “If soon thou com’st not, night will fall around,
  My head with a sad slumber will be bound,
  And the pure draught be spilt upon the ground.