Hark, my lover, it is spring!
1
On the wind a faint far call
Wakes a pang within my heart,
At the harbour mouth a sail
5
Glimmers in the morning sun,
And the ripples at her prow
Whiten into crumbling foam,
As she forges outward bound
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For the teeming foreign ports.
Through the open window now,
Hear the sailors lift a song!
In the meadow ground the frogs
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With their deafening flutes begin,—
The old madness of the world
In their golden throats again.
Little fifers of live bronze,
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Who hath taught you with wise lore
To unloose the strains of joy,
When Orion seeks the west?
And you feathered flute-players,
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Who instructed you to fill
All the blossomy orchards now
I doubt not our father Pan
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Hath a care of all these things.
In some valley of the hills
By quick water he hath cut
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A new pipe, and set the wood
To his smiling lips, and blown,
That earth's rapture be restored.
And those wild Pandean stops
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Mark the cadence life must keep.
O my lover, be thou glad;
It is spring in Hellas now.