SONNETS FROM A HOSPITAL

Remembering sunlight on the steepled square,

Remembering April's way with little streets,

And pouter pigeons coasting down the air,

Spilling a beauty, like white-crested fleets,—

I have imagined, in these pain-racked days,

The look of grasses thrusting through the earth,

Of tender shoots along green-bordered ways,

Of hedges, and their first, frail blossoming mirth.

I have imagined, too, in some such wise

Death may allow, within her darkened room,

Some subtle intimation of wide skies,

Of startled grasses, and the hedge in bloom,—

And we may know when some far spring comes down,

Wearing her magic slippers through the town.