The leaves dance, the leaves sing, The leaves dance in the breath of the Spring.
I bid them dance, I bid them sing, For the limpid glance Of my ladyling;For the gift to the Spring of a dewier spring, For God's good grace of this ladyling!
I know in the lane, by the hedgerow track, The long, broad grasses underneath Are warted with rain like a toad's knobbed back;But here May weareth a rainless wreath.
In the new-sucked milk of the sun's bosom Is dabbled the mouth of the daisy-blossom;The smouldering rosebud chars through its sheath;The lily stirs her snowy limbs, Ere she swims Naked up through her cloven green, Like the wave-born Lady of Love Hellene;And the scattered snowdrop exquisite Twinkles and gleams, As if the showers of the sunny beams Were splashed from the earth in drops of light.
Everything That is child of Spring Casts its bud or blossoming Upon the stream of my delight.
Their voices, that scents are, now let them upraise To Sylvia, O Sylvia, her sweet, feat ways!
Their lovely mother them array, And prank them out in holiday, For syllabling to Sylvia;And all the birds on branches lave their mouths with May, To bear with me this burthen, For singing to Sylvia.
2.
While thus I stood in mazes bound Of vernal sorcery, I heard a dainty dubious sound, As of goodly melody;Which first was faint as if in swound, Then burst so suddenly In warring concord all around, That, whence this thing might be, To see The very marrow longed in me!
It seemed of air, it seemed of ground, And never any witchery Drawn from pipe, or reed, or string, Made such dulcet ravishing.
'Twas like no earthly instrument, Yet had something of them all In its rise, and in its fall;As if in one sweet consort there were blent Those archetypes celestial Which our endeavouring instruments recall.
So heavenly flutes made murmurous plain To heavenly viols, that again - Aching with music--wailed back pain;Regals release their notes, which rise Welling, like tears from heart to eyes;And the harp thrills with thronging sighs.