The hen-thrush sat, and he, her lief and dear,
Among the boughs did make

A ceaseless music of her married time,

And all the ancient stones grew sweet to hear,

And answered him in the unspoken rhyme
Of gracious forms most musical

That tremble on the wall

And trim its age with airy fantasies

That flicker in the sun, and hardly seem

As if to be beheld were all,

And only to our eyes

They rise and fall,

And fall and rise,

Sink down like silence, or a-sudden stream

As wind-blown on the wind as streams a wedding-chime.

But you are wheeling me while I dream,
And we've almost reached the meadow!
You may wheel me fast through the sunshine,
You may wheel me fast through the shadow,
But wheel me slowly, brother mine,
Through the green of the sappy meadow;
For the sun, these days have been so fine,
Must have touched it over with celandine,
And the southern hawthorn, I divine,
Sheds a muffled shadow.

There blows

The first primrose,

Under the bare bank roses:

There is but one,

And the bank is brown,

But soon the children will come down,
The ringing children come singing down,
To pick their Easter posies,

And they'll spy it out, my beautiful,
Among the bare brier-roses;

And when I sit here again alone,

The bare brown bank will be blind and dull,
Alas for Easter posies!

But when the din is over and gone,

Like an eye that opens after pain,

I shall see my pale flower shining again;
Like a fair star after a gust of rain
I shall see my pale flower shining again;
Like a glow-worm after the rolling wain
Hath shaken darkness down the lane

I shall see my pale flower shining again;
And it will blow here for two months more,
And it will blow here again next year,
And the year past that, and the year beyond;
And through all the years till my years are o'er
I shall always find it here.

Shining across from the bank above,
Shining up from the pond below,
Ere a water-fly wimple the silent pond,
Or the first green weed appear.
And I shall sit here under the tree,
And as each slow bud uncloses,

I shall see it brighten and brighten to me,
From among the leafing brier-roses,

The leaning leafing roses,

As at eve the leafing shadows grow,

And the star of light and love

Draweth near o'er her airy glades,

Draweth near through her heavenly shades,
As a maid through a myrtle grove.
And the flowers will multiply,

As the stars come blossoming over the sky,
The bank will blossom, the waters blow,

Till the singing children hitherward hie
To gather May-day posies;

And the bank will be bare wherever they go,
As dawn, the primrose-girl, goes by,
And alas for heaven's primroses!

Blare the trumpet, and boom the gun,
But, oh! to sit here thus in the sun,
To sit here feeling my work is done,
While the sands of life so golden run,
And I watch the children's posies,
And my idle heart is whispering,
"Bring whatever the years may bring,
The flowers will blossom, the birds will sing,
And there 'll always be primroses."

Looking before me here in the sun,
I see the Aprils one after one,
Primrosed Aprils one by one,
Primrosed Aprils on and on,
Till the floating prospect closes
In golden glimmers that rise and rise,
And perhaps are gleams of Paradise,

And perhaps too far for mortal eyes —

New years of fresh primroses,

Years of earth's primroses,

Springs to be, and springs for me

Of distant, dim primroses.

My soul lies out like a basking hound,
A hound that dreams and dozes;

Along my life my length I lay,

I fill to-morrow and yesterday,

I am warm with the suns that have long since set, I am warm with the summers that are not yet,

And like one who dreams and dozes
Softly afloat on a sunny sea,

Two worlds are whispering over me,
And there blows a wind of roses

From the backward shore to the shore before,
From the shore before to the backward shore,
And like two clouds that meet and pour,

Each through each, till core in core
A single self reposes,

The nevermore with the evermore
Above me mingles and closes;

As my soul lies out like the basking hound,
And wherever it lies seems happy ground,
And when, awakened by some sweet sound,
A dreamy eye uncloses,

I see a blooming world around
And I lie amid primroses,-

Years of sweet primroses,

Springs of fresh primroses,

Springs to be, and springs for me

Of distant, dim primroses.

O to lie a-dream, a-dream,

To feel I may dream and to know you deem

My work is done forever,

And the palpitating fever

That gains and loses, loses and gains,

And beats the hurrying blood on the brunt of a thousand pains

Cooled at once by that blood-let

Upon the paparet;

And all the tedious taskèd toil of the difficult long endeavor

Solved and quit by no more fine

Than these limbs of mine,

Spanned and measured once for all

By that right hand I lost,

Bought up at so light a cost

As one bloody fall

On a soldier's bed,

And three days on the ruined wall

Among the thirstless dead.

O to think my name is crost

From duty's muster-roll;

That I may slumber though the clarion call,
And live the joy of an embodied soul

Free as a liberated ghost.

O to feel a life of deed

Was emptied out to feed

That fire of pain that burned so brief a while,
That fire from which I come, as the dead come
Forth from the irreparable tomb,

Or as a martyr on his funeral pile

Heaps up the burdens other men do bear
Through years of segregated care,

And takes the total load

Upon his shoulders broad,

And steps from earth to God.

O to think, through good or ill,
Whatever I am you'll love me still;
O to think, though dull I be,
You that are so grand and free,
You that are so bright and gay,
Will pause to hear me when I will,
As though my head were gray;

And though there's little I can say,

Each will look kind with honor while he hears.

And to your loving ears

My thoughts will halt with honorable scars,

And when my dark voice stumbles with the weight