THE LENT LILY

’Tis spring; come out to ramble
 The hilly brakes around,
For under thorn and bramble
 About the hollow ground
 The primroses are found.

And there’s the windflower chilly
 With all the winds at play,
And there’s the Lenten lily
 That has not long to stay
 And dies on Easter day.

And since till girls go maying
 You find the primrose still,
And find the windflower playing
 With every wind at will,
 But not the daffodil,

Bring baskets now, and sally
 Upon the spring’s array,
And bear from hill and valley
 The daffodil away
 That dies on Easter day.

XXX

Others, I am not the first,
Have willed more mischief than they durst: 
If in the breathless night I too
Shiver now, ’tis nothing new.

More than I, if truth were told,
Have stood and sweated hot and cold,
And through their reins in ice and fire
Fear contended with desire.

Agued once like me were they,
But I like them shall win my way
Lastly to the bed of mould
Where there’s neither heat nor cold.

But from my grave across my brow
Plays no wind of healing now,
And fire and ice within me fight
Beneath the suffocating night.

XXXI

On Wenlock Edge the wood’s in trouble;
 His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves;
The gale, it plies the saplings double,
 And thick on Severn snow the leaves.

’Twould blow like this through holt and hanger
 When Uricon the city stood: 
’Tis the old wind in the old anger,
 But then it threshed another wood.

Then, ’twas before my time, the Roman
 At yonder heaving hill would stare: 
The blood that warms an English yeoman,
 The thoughts that hurt him, they were there.

There, like the wind through woods in riot,
 Through him the gale of life blew high;
The tree of man was never quiet: 
 Then ’twas the Roman, now ’tis I.

The gale, it plies the saplings double,
 It blows so hard, ’twill soon be gone: 
To-day the Roman and his trouble
 Are ashes under Uricon.

XXXII

From far, from eve and morning
 And yon twelve-winded sky,
The stuff of life to knit me
 Blew hither:  here am I.

Now- for a breath I tarry
 Nor yet disperse apart-
Take my hand quick and tell me,
 What have you in your heart.

Speak now, and I will answer;
 How shall I help you, say;
Ere to the wind’s twelve quarters
 I take my endless way.

XXXIII

If truth in hearts that perish
 Could move the powers on high,
I think the love I bear you
 Should make you not to die.