Oh brightling flower, sprung up from the “dead”!

Oh little jonquil of my soul’s content,

Where did you bide, when sharper seasons spread,

And all your faded leaves fell, limp and spent?

 

I thought you’d all but perished when I scanned

The meadows where you’d waved your charms last spring—

For after warmth prevailed upon the land,

I found you withered, like a cast-out thing.

 

Again I passed in winter, when the heat

Had long since vanished from the windswept plain—

But oh!  What tender flower would make a seat

In hinterlands of frost and freezing rain?

 

And now, again, the airs of March unfurl:

Today, at last, I search for new-burst buds;

It seems my sense has stilled its snowstorm whirl—

And here you burgeon, pressing through the mud.

 

Bent in the bulb, asleep time out of mind,

Your life-force, so condensed, had pulsed unseen—

Now–lo!  You’ve left that holding-husk behind,

And ‘neath gold lips rise straps of glowing green!