O tender time that love thinks long to see,
⁠Sweet foot of spring that with her footfall sows
⁠Late snowlike flowery leavings of the snows,
Be not too long irresolute to be;
O mother-month, where have they hidden thee?
⁠Out of the pale time of the ilowerless rose
I reach my heart out toward the springtime lands,
⁠I stretch my spirit forth to the fair hours,
⁠The purplest of the prime;
I lean my soul down over them, with hands
⁠Made wide to take the ghostly growths of flowers;
⁠I send my love back to the lovely time.

Where has the greenwood hid thy gracious head?
⁠Veiled with What visions while the grey world grieves,
⁠Or muffled with what shadows of green leaves.
What warm intangible green shadows spread
To sweeten the sweet twilight for thy bed?
⁠What sleep enchants thee? what delight deceives?
Where the deep dreamlike dew before the dawn
⁠Feels not the fingers of the sunlight yet
⁠His silver web unweave,
Thy footless ghost on some unfooted lawn
⁠Whose air the unrisen sunbeams fear to fret
⁠Lives a ghost's life of daylong dawn and eve.

Sunrise it sees not, neither set of star.
⁠Large nightfall, nor imperial plenilune.
⁠Nor strong sweet shape of the full-breasted noon;
But where the silver-sandalled shadows are,
Too soft for arrows of the sun to mar,
⁠Moves with the mild gait of an ungrown moon;
Hard overhead the half-lit crescent swims,
⁠The tender-coloured night draws hardly breath.
⁠The light is listening;
They watch the dawn of slender-shapen limbs,
⁠Virginal, born again of doubtful death,
⁠Chill foster-father of the weanling spring.

As sweet desire of day before the day,
⁠As dreams of love before the true love born,
⁠From the outer edge of winter overworn
The ghost arisen of May before the May
Takes through dim air her unawakened way,
⁠The gracious ghost of morning risen ere morn.
With little unblown breasts and child-eyed looks
⁠Following, the very maid, the girl-child spring,
⁠Lifts windward her bright brows,
Dips her light feet in warm and moving brooks,
⁠And kindles with her own mouth's colouring
⁠The fearful firstlings of the plumeless boughs.

I seek thee sleeping, and awhile I see,
⁠Fair face that art not, how thy maiden breath
⁠Shall put at last the deadly days to death
And fill the fields and fire the woods with thee
And seaward hollows where my feet would be
⁠When heaven shall hear the word that April saith
To change the cold heart of the weary time,
⁠To stir and soften all the time to tears.
⁠Tears joyfuller than mirth;
As even to May's clear height the young days climb
⁠With feet not swifter than those fair first years
⁠Whose flowers revive not with thy flowers on earth.

I would not bid thee, though I might, give back
⁠One good thing youth has given and borne away;
⁠I crave not any comfort of the day
That is not, nor on time's retrodden track
Would turn to meet the white-robed hours or black
⁠That long since left me on their mortal way;
Nor light nor love that has been, nor the breath
⁠That comes with morning from the sun to be
⁠And sets light hope on fire;
No fruit, no flower thought once too fair for death,
⁠No flower nor hour once fallen from life's green tree,
⁠No leaf once plucked or once-fulfilled desire.

The morning song beneath the stars that fled
⁠With twilight through the moonless mountain air,
⁠While youth with burning lips and wreathless hair
Sang toward the sun that was to crown his head.
Rising; the hopes that triumphed and fell dead,
⁠The sweet swift eyes and songs of hours that were;
These may'st thou not give back forever; these.
⁠As at the sea's heart all her wrecks lie waste.
⁠Lie deeper than the sea;
But flowers thou may'st, and winds, and hours of ease,
⁠And all its April to the world thou may'st
⁠Give back, and half my April back to me.