May 1917 by John Jay Thompson

Lyrics

The earth is damp: in everything I taste the bitter breath of pallid spring Hark! In the air a fanning sound Like distant beehives.—Ah, the woods awake; And finding they are naked, cast around A mist, like that which trembles on the lake The forest murmurs, shudders, sings On pipes and strings With harp and flute; And then turns coy As if ashamed to show its joy And in a flush of happiness grows mute Alas, the spring! Ah, liquid light Your vistas of transparent green Fall on my spirit like a blight The tapestries you hang on high Are like a pageant to a sick man's eye Or sights in fevеr seen Behind your bowers and your blooms Volcanic desolation looms; Your lifе doth death express; Each leaf proclaims a blackened waste Each tree, some paradise defaced Each bud, a wilderness And all your lisping notes are drowned By one deep murmur underground That tells us joy is fled Love, innocence, the heart's desire The flashing of Apollo's lyre,— Beauty herself is dead In all the valleys of the earth,— Save for the dead,—no wreath is hung Long, long ago the sounds of mirth Died on man's tongue Love is an interrupted song And life a broken lute; Time's pendulum has stopped: a throng Of huddling moments press along Untimed, in mad pursuit And into days and months are whirled As in a dream of pain Chaos has wrecked the outer world Chaos invades the brain The sounds, the sights, the scents of spring Awake that sullen suffering Which opium soothes in vain,— Like the sad dawn of dread relief That tells the greatness of his grief To him that is insane Would I had perished with the past! Would I had shared the fate Of those who heard the trumpet-call And rode upon the blast,— Who stopped not to debate Nor strove to save But giving life, gave all Casting their manhood as a man might cast A rose upon a grave Would that like them beneath the sod I lay Beneath the glistening grass Beneath the flood of things that come, and pass Beckon, and shine and fade away