MAYTIME IN MIDWINTER.

A new year gleams on us, tearful

And troubled and smiling dim

As the smile on a lip still fearful,

As glances of eyes that swim:

But the bird of my heart makes cheerful

The days that are bright for him.

Child, how may a man's love merit

The grace you shed as you stand,

The gift that is yours to inherit?

Through you are the bleak days bland;

Your voice is a light to my spirit;

You bring the sun in your hand.

The year's wing shows not a feather

As yet of the plumes to be;

Yet here in the shrill grey weather

The spring's self stands at my knee,

And laughs as we commune together,

And lightens the world we see.

The rains are as dews for the christening

Of dawns that the nights benumb:

The spring's voice answers me listening

For speech of a child to come,

While promise of music is glistening

On lips that delight keeps dumb.

The mists and the storms receding

At sight of you smile and die:

Your eyes held wide on me reading

Shed summer across the sky:

Your heart shines clear for me, heeding

No more of the world than I.

The world, what is it to you, dear,

And me, if its face be grey,

And the new-born year be a shrewd year

For flowers that the fierce winds fray?

You smile, and the sky seems blue, dear;

You laugh, and the month turns May.

Love cares not for care, he has daffed her

Aside as a mate for guile:

The sight that my soul yearns after

Feeds full my sense for awhile;

Your sweet little sun-faced laughter,

Your good little glad grave smile.

Your hands through the bookshelves flutter;

Scott, Shakespeare, Dickens, are caught;

Blake's visions, that lighten and mutter;

Molière — and his smile has nought

Left on it of sorrow, to utter

The secret things of his thought.

No grim thing written or graven

But grows, if you gaze on it, bright;

A lark's note rings from the raven,

And tragedy's robe turns white;

And shipwrecks drift into haven;

And darkness laughs, and is light.

Grief seems but a vision of madness;

Life's key-note peals from above

With nought in it more of sadness

Than broods on the heart of a dove:

At sight of you, thought grows gladness,

And life, through love of you, love.