What, gentle Spring, and art thou come? Desire,
Under the iron sceptre of thy sire,
⁠Cried out for thee.
Fair truant! couldst thou not have flown
More quickly to our colder zone,
⁠From those beyond the sea?
Or didst thou linger on, and grieve
The sunny southern land to leave?
Cease for awhile thy wandering,
Rest and be welcome, gentle Spring.

Why, like a maid that would the more be sought,.
Dost hide thee, almost ere thy beauty caught
⁠Our eager view,
Behind yon cloud that frowning passed?
A laggard surely, and the last
⁠Of winter's sullen crew
He will not aid thee in thy wiles:
See, at thy touch the traitor smiles;
And thou, discovered once again,
Shalt find thy shyness all in vain.

Besides, an hour ago her fragrance sweet
Disclosed the violet springing at my feet;
⁠And I knew well,
Gazing upon the purple gem,
From whose bright veil or diadem
⁠That tiny treasure fell.
I spied the crocus lifting up
His yellow head, his golden cup;
The very daisies in the grass
Showed me the way that Spring did pass.

Yield, then, fair nymph! for, goddess as thou art,
We will not let thee from our shore depart
⁠Until thou bless
The land that all expectant lies,
And every soul that longing sighs
⁠To feel thy soft caress.
The waking bees, the happy birds,
The timid flocks, the patient herds,
Thy presence own with grateful joy,
And silent mourn if thou art coy.

From thy full hands we claim the daffodil,
And those bright bells the midnight fairies fill
⁠With honey dew;
Pink blossom of the almond-tree,
Tender laburnum hanging free,
⁠And periwinkle blue.
Spare us those jewels from thy crown,
These buds that deck thy gauzy gown;
And stay thy flight, and fold thy wing —
We hold thee captive, gentle Spring.

Would this sunshine be completer,
Or these violets smell sweeter,
Or the birds sing more in metre,
⁠If it all were years ago,
⁠When the melted mountain-snow
⁠Heard in Enna all the woe
Of the poor forlorn Demeter?

Would a stronger life pulse o'er us
If a panther-chariot bore us,
If we saw, enthroned before us,
⁠Ride the leopard-footed god,
⁠With a fir-cone tip the rod,
⁠Whirl the thyrsus round, and nod
To a drunken Maenad-chorus?

Bloomed there richer, redder roses
Where the Lesbian earth incloses
All of Sappho? where reposes
⁠Meleager, laid to sleep
⁠By the olive-girdled deep;
⁠Where the Syrian maidens weep,
Bringing serpolet in posies?

Ah! it may be! Greece had leisure
For a world of faded pleasure;
We must tread a tamer measure,
⁠To a milder, homelier lyre;
⁠We must tend a paler fire,
⁠Lay less perfume on the pyre,
Be content with poorer treasure!

Were the brown-limbed lovers bolder?
Venus younger, Cupid older?
Down the wood-nymph's warm white shoulder
⁠Trailed a purpler, madder vine?
⁠Were the poets more divine?
⁠Brew we no such golden wine
Here, where summer suns are colder?

Yet for us too life has flowers,
Time a glass of joyous hours,
Interchange of sun and showers,
⁠And a wealth of leafy glades,
⁠Meant for loving men and maids,
⁠Full of warm green lights and shades,
Trellis-work of wild-wood bowers.

So while English suns are keeping
Count of sowing-time and reaping,
We've no need to waste our weeping,
⁠Though the glad Greeks lounged at ease
⁠Underneath their olive-trees,
⁠And the Sophoclean bees
Swarmed on lips of poets sleeping!