- PERSEPHONE
AT last!
After the dumb sick longing;—
At last!
Filling the ancient urns
With odours and all the air
With a shudder, a laughter, a cry—
On a wind blown over leagues of tremulous grass,
Leagues of transparent grass,
Leagues of a million of grass-blades moist with rain,
Moist with warm rain and fresh from the brown earth—
At last!
The ravished one, the birth-pale one.
The holy one, the wanton one.
The Spring returns!
O, youth of the world!
O, martyred innocents!
Murdered on all these battlefields of ours —
Fields that are wet with something else than rain —
Is it your blood that lends unto our flowers
This quivering beauty that redeemeth pain?
For at last!
The ravished one, the birth-pale one.
The holy one, the wanton one.
The Spring returns!
