To a Bunch of Lilac

“Dis-moi la fleur, je te dirai la femme “

Is it the April springing,
Or the bird in the breeze above ?
My throat is full of singing,
My heart is full of love.

O heart, are you not yet broken ?
O dream, so done with and dead,
Is life’s one word not spoken,
And the rede of it all not read ?

No hope in the whole world over !
No hope in the infinite blue !
Yet I sing and laugh out like a lover—
Oh, who is it, April—who ?

And the glad young year is springing ;
And the birds, and the breeze above,
And the shrill tree-tops, are singing—
And I am singing—of love.

* * * *

                                                O beautiful

O beautiful lilac flowers,
Oh, say, is it you, is it you
The sun-struck, love-sick hours
Go faint for murmuring through ?

O full of ineffable yearning,
So balmy, mystical, deep,
And faint beyond any discerning,
Like far-off voices in sleep—

1 love you, O lilac, I love you !
Till life goes swooning by,
I breathe and enwreathe and enfold you,
And long but to love, and die.