Last Spring

By Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

THIS morning at the door

I heard the Spring.

Quickly I set it wide

And, welcoming,

“Come in, sweet Spring,” I cried,

“The winter ash, long dried,

Waits but your breath to rise

On phantom wing.”

A brown leaf shivered by,

A soulless thing —

My heart in quick dismay

Forgot to sing —

Twisted and grim it lay,

Kin to the ghost-ash gray,

Dead, dead — strange herald this

Of jocund Spring!

I spurned it from the door.

I longed that Spring

Should come with song and glow

And rush of wing,

Not this, not this!— But O

Dead leaf, a year ago

You were the dear first-born

Of Hope and Spring!