Tiresias, and Other Poems

Early Spring

Alfred Tennyson


I.
ONCE MORE the Heavenly Power
    Makes all things new,
And domes the red-plow’d hills
    With loving blue;
The blackbirds have their wills,
    The throstles too.

II.
Opens a door in heaven;
    From skies of glass
A Jacob’s ladder falls
    On greening grass,
And o’er the mountain-walls
    Young angels pass.

III.
Before them fleets the shower,
    And burst the buds,
And shine the level lands,
    And flash the floods;
The stars are from their hands
    Flung thro’ the woods,

IV.
The woods with living airs
    How softly fann’d,
Light airs from where the deep,
    All down the sand,
Is breathing in his sleep,
    Heard by the land.

V.
O, follow, leaping blood,
    The season’s lure!
O heart, look down and up
    Serene, secure,
Warm as the crocus cup,
    Like snowdrops, pure!

VI.
Past, Future glimpse and fade
    Thro’ some slight spell,
A gleam from yonder vale,
    Some far blue fell,
And sympathies, how frail,
    In sound and smell!

VII.
Till at thy chuckled note,
    Thou twinkling bird,
The fairy fancies range,
    And, lightly stirr’d,
Ring little bells of change
    From word to word.

VIII.
For now the Heavenly Power
    Makes all things new,
And thaws the cold, and fills
    The flower with dew;
The blackbirds have their wills,
    The poets too.


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