THE RESURRECTION OF ALCILIA.

Sweet song-flower of the Mayspring of our song,

Be welcome to us, with loving thanks and praise

To his good hand who travelling on strange ways

Found thee forlorn and fragrant, lain along

Beneath dead leaves that many a winter's wrong

Had rained and heaped through nigh three centuries’ maze

Above thy Maybloom, hiding from our gaze

The life that in thy leaves lay sweet and strong.

For thine have life, while many above thine head

Piled by the wind lie blossomless and dead.

So now disburdened of such load above

That lay as death's own dust upon thee shed

By days too deaf to hear thee like a dove

Murmuring, we hear thee, bird and flower of love.