With that perfection which its being meant: 
     Divided not by months that intervene,
     But linked by all the flowers that bud between. 
     Forever smiling thro’ its season brief,
     The one in glory and the one in grief: 
     Forever painting to our museful sight,
     How lowlihead and loveliness unite.

     Born from the first blind yearning of the earth
     To be a mother and give happy birth,
     Ere yet the northern sun such rapture brings,
     Lo, from her virgin breast the Snowdrop springs;
     And ere the snows have melted from the grass,
     And not a strip of greensward doth appear,
     Save the faint prophecy its cheeks declare,
     Alone, unkissed, unloved, behold it pass! 
     While in the ripe enthronement of the year,
     Whispering the breeze, and wedding the rich air
     With her so sweet, delicious bridal breath, —
     Odorous and exquisite beyond compare,
     And starr’d with dews upon her forehead clear,
     Fresh-hearted as a Maiden Queen should be
     Who takes the land’s devotion as her fee, —
     The Wild Rose blooms, all summer for her dower,
     Nature’s most beautiful and perfect flower.

     The death of winter

     When April with her wild blue eye
     Comes dancing over the grass,
     And all the crimson buds so shy
     Peep out to see her pass;
     As lightly she loosens her showery locks
     And flutters her rainy wings;
     Laughingly stoops
     To the glass of the stream,
     And loosens and loops
     Her hair by the gleam,
     While all the young villagers blithe as the flocks
     Go frolicking round in rings; —
     Then Winter, he who tamed the fly,
     Turns on his back and prepares to die,
     For he cannot live longer under the sky.

     Down the valleys glittering green,
     Down from the hills in snowy rills,
     He melts between the border sheen
     And leaps the flowery verges! 
     He cannot choose but brighten their hues,
     And tho’ he would creep, he fain must leap,
     For the quick Spring spirit urges. 
     Down the vale and down the dale
     He leaps and lights, till his moments fail,
     Buried in blossoms red and pale,
     While the sweet birds sing his dirges!

     O Winter!  I’d live that life of thine,
     With a frosty brow and an icicle tongue,
     And never a song my whole life long, —
     Were such delicious burial mine! 
     To die and be buried, and so remain
     A wandering brook in April’s train,
     Fixing my dying eyes for aye
     On the dawning brows of maiden May.

     Song

     The moon is alone in