Spring is begun;
  Some leaves at last appear;
Trees’ twigs were one
  Time earlier in the year
Of leafage bare
  And bleak as desert sands
That nothing care
  For rain that peopled lands
Receive much more
Because more needed are.
Tho’ the trees’ store
Of leaves is yet quite spare,
Not being hid
  Wholly by leaves the boughs,
They’ll soon be rid
  Of former winter drowse
And be as green
  As were the year before;
But while they’ve been
  Obeying Nature’s law
In yearly night,
  Their fellow-trees awake
Were, full as bright
  As Titan’s beams—that break
Nocturnal dark
And hide the stars from sight,—
And fain did mark
All of that sound and light
Their dormant friends
  Knew not, nor can for waste
Time make amends;
  Nor will they ever haste
Thereto, nor try
  To stay awake next year—
Were’t so, whereby
  Should we know winter here?
For ’twere not such
  And autumn could not be;
For it needs much
  Fall from tall linden-tree
To cross from thence
  To winter, whence to spring,
While garden-fence
  Is home to birds that sing
    Not only then
      But ev’ry season through,
    And even as when
      They warble, cheep, and coo,
Summer is raught,
  As Earth the hot Sun rounds,
Tho’ never taught;
  While summer here resounds,
Which soon will change
  To mellow autumn, when
A varied range
  Of leaves bestrew again
The unswept ways,
  As last year, and the last,
Through countless days,
  Not only that have past,
But those to come,
  Each year identical,
Until the sum
  Of all moments that shall
Have ever been
  Shall reach their fated end,
And all is seen,
  Done, and wholly bekenn’d,
The seasons four
  Perpetual repeat
Shall make no more,
  Time’s constant throbbing beat
      At last shall cease,
            And what succeeds to this
      Consist in peace?
            With hope, perpetual bliss.

(March or April 2005, slightly altered 28th August and 30th October, 2005.)