The Hounds of Spring

A Song of Springtime, by Waterhouse.

Thanks to Tess, of Midnight Muse, for directing my attention to this gorgeous poem by Swinburne, a good friend to the P.R.B.

When the hounds of Spring are on Winter's traces,
The mother of months in meadow or plain
Fills the shadows and windy places
With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain...
And soft as lips that laugh and hide
The laughing leaves of the trees divide,
And screen from seeing and leave in sight
The god pursuing, the maiden's flight.

Where shall we find her? how shall we sing to her?
Fold our hands round her knees, and cling?
O that our hearts were as fire and could spring to her,
Fire, or the strength of the streams that spring!
For the stars and the winds are unto her
As raiment, as songs of the harp-player;
And the risen stars and the fallen cling to her,
And the south-west wind and the west wind sing.

For winter's rains and ruins are over,
And all the season of snows and sins;
The days dividing lover and lover,
The light that loses, the night that wins;
And time remembered is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
And in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom the Spring begins...