FEBRUARY

Can there be aught to touch the sleeping dead

To consciousness; can love still call to love

Across that dark abyss; can feeling move

Dead heart and brain, that once with blood were fed,

To stir and quicken in their narrow bed,

For that which yet is living? We believe

Such force has love, that it may still retrieve

Its heart's Eurydice among the dead.

I shall awake, then, shall awake my soul —

Not when full summer beautifies the earth,

But with the first sweet stirring of the sap,

Ere yet the fields are green or leaves unroll:

I shall but sleep awhile in Nature's lap,

To be reborn with February's rebirth.