IN THE ALPS.

It is spring by now in the world, but here

The doom of winter on all the year;

A little brown bird flits to and fro,

Watching perhaps for a rift of blue

Where the mists divide and the sky looks through,

Or a crocus-bell in the half-thawed snow.

Little brown bird, have you no nest here

When winds blow cold in the long starlight?

Never a tree, and the fields so white —

And are you ever a wayfarer?

It is spring by now in the vales below,

And why do you stay in the world of snow?