HEALED

The winds like a pack of hounds

Snap at my dragging heels

With sudden leapings and playful bounds

They urge me out to the greener grounds

Where the butterfly sinks and the swallow reels

Giddy with Spring, with its smells and sounds —

And I go...

For of late I have fretted and sulked, and clung to my books and the house;

Lethargic with winter fancies and dulled with a torpid mood —

But now I am called by the grasses; the rumor of blossoming boughs;

The hints of a thousand singers and the ancient thrill of the wood.

For the streets run over with sunlight and spill

A glory on bricks and the dustiest sill;

And Life, like a great drum, pulses and pounds —

I follow the world and I follow my will,

And I go to see what the park reveals

When the winds, like a pack of buoyant hounds,

Snap at my dragging heels...

Once with the green again

How I am changed —

Lo, I have seen again

Friends long estranged.

Once more the lyrical

Rose-bush and river;

Once more the miracle,

Greater than ever!

Where is there dulness now —

Rich with new urges

Life in its fullness now

Surges and purges

All that is brash in me —

Sunlight and Song

These things will fashion me

Splendid and strong.

Splendid and strong I shall grow once again;

Joyful and clean as the mind of a child,

As tears after pain,

Or hearts reconciled,

As woods washed with rain,

As love in the wild,

Or that bird to whom all things but singing is vain.

“Bird, there were songs in your heart just as rapturous

As these that you bring —

Why when we longed for your magic to capture us

Did you not sing?

Now with the world making music we heed you not.

Coward, for all your fine challenge, we need you not —

We too are brave with the Spring!”