To Jane: The Invitation

Lyrics

Best and brightest, come away! Fairer far than this fair Day Which, like thee to those in sorrow Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow To the rough Year just awake In its cradle on the brake The Brightest hour of unborn Spring Through the winter wandering Found, it seems, the halcyon Morn To hoar February born Bending from Heaven, in azure mirth It kissed the forehead of the Earth And smiled upon the silent sea And bade the frozen streams be free And waked to music all their fountains And breathed upon thе frozen mountains And like a prophetеss of May Strewed flowers upon the barren way Making the wintry world appear Like one on whom thou smilest, dear Away, away, from men and towns To the wild wood and the downs— To the silent wilderness Where the soul need not repress Its music lest it should not find An echo in another's mind While the touch of Nature's art Harmonizes heart to heart I leave this notice on my door For each accustomed visitor:— "I am gone into the fields To take what this sweet hour yields;— Reflection, you may come tomorrow Sit by the fireside with Sorrow.— You with the unpaid bill, Despair,— You, tiresome verse-reciter, Care,— I will pay you in the grave,— Death will listen to your stave Expectation too, be off! Today is for itself enough; Hope, in pity mock not Woe With smiles, nor follow where I go; Long having lived on thy sweet food At length I find one moment's good After long pain—with all your love This you never told me of." Radiant Sister of the Day Awake! arise! And come away! To the wild woods and the plains And the pools where winter rains Image all their roof of leaves Where the pine its garland weaves Of sapless green, and ivy dun Round stems that never kiss the sun: Where the lawns and pastures be And the sandhills of the sea:— Where the melting hoar-frost wets The daisy-star that never sets And wind-flowers, and violets Which yet join not scent to hue Crown the pale year weak and new; When the night is left behind In the deep east, dun and blind And the blue noon is over us And the multitudinous Billows murmur at our feet Where the earth and ocean meet And all things seem only one In the universal sun