The Return of the Year
Again the warm bare earth, the noon
That hangs upon her healing scars,
The midnight round, the great red moon,
The mother with her brood of stars,
The mist-rack and the wakening rain
Blown soft in many a forest way,
The yellowing elm-trees, and again
The blood-root in its sheath of gray.
The vesper-sparrow’s song, the stress
Of yearning notes that gush and stream,
The lyric joy, the tenderness,
And once again the dream! the dream!
A touch of far-off joy and power,
A something it is life to learn,
Comes back to earth, and one short hour
The glamours of the gods return.
This life’s old mood and cult of care
Falls smitten by an older truth,
And the gray world wins back to her
The rapture of her vanished youth.
Dead thoughts revive, and he that heeds
Shall hear, as by a spirit led,
A song among the golden reeds:
‘The gods are vanished but not dead!’
For one short hour, unseen yet near,
They haunt us, a forgotten mood,
A glory upon mead and mere,
A magic in the leafless wood.
At morning we shall catch the glow
Of Dian’s quiver on the hill,
And somewhere in the glades I know
That Pan is at his piping still.
