What the Green Fields Tell Us

Was ever an Autumn that failed to bring
A prophecy of returning spring?
Was ever a Winter of snow and ice
But seemed Death playing with loaded dice
Against the Year, till the game was won
By the carrot gold oif the guardian Sun?
We see in the buds of a future year
The flower and the tree and the vine appear
Close patches in parcels and tiny sheaves
Guarding from Winter their embryo leaves
With an eye half open can one behold
In the stony grasp of the growing cold
The promise of net year’s bark[?] and fruit,
With grapnel and wing and parachute.
Scudding away to some sheltered nook,
Or sailing down on the nurturing Brook,
Or yet compelling its foe to give
To the clinging pest some whither to love.

Who orders their flight to the dim retreat
Where the past and future in council meet—
Last summer and next by the sheltering wall—
To evolve their answer to April’s call?
Ah Who but the Dawn in whose breath they breathe
In whose vernal fervor they swell and seethe,
Till anon they open to sunlight and air
The treasures of life that were hidden there!

Shall I, with a humble prescience lent
To catch the trend of a coming event,
Forget the lesson of herb and flower
That the life of God fills every hour
And every place, and is mindful of me
As of seedling and plant and the budding tree?
Till the constant Sun and the seasons doubt
I will keep my faith though the skeptic flout.