Lyrics of Earth

<h2><SPAN name="THE_RETURN_OF_THE_YEAR" id="THE_RETURN_OF_THE_YEAR"></SPAN>THE RETURN OF THE YEAR</h2> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> <span class="i0">Again the warm bare earth, the noon<br/></span> <span class="i2">That hangs upon her healing scars,<br/></span> <span class="i0">The midnight round, the great red moon,<br/></span> <span class="i2">The mother with her brood of stars,<br/></span></div> <div class="stanza"> <span class="i0">The mist-rack and the wakening rain<br/></span> <span class="i2">Blown soft in many a forest way,<br/></span> <span class="i0">The yellowing elm-trees, and again<br/></span> <span class="i2">The blood-root in its sheath of gray.<br/></span></div> <div class="stanza"> <span class="i0">The vesper-sparrow's song, the stress<br/></span> <span class="i2">Of yearning notes that gush and stream,<br/></span> <span class="i0">The lyric joy, the tenderness,<br/></span> <span class="i2">And once again the dream! the dream!<br/></span></div> <div class="stanza"> <span class="i0">A touch of far-off joy and power,<br/></span> <span class="i2">A something it is life to learn,<br/></span> <span class="i0">Comes back to earth, and one short hour<br/></span> <span class="i2">The glamours of the gods return.<br/></span></div> <div class="stanza"> <span class="i0">This life's old mood and cult of care<br/></span> <span class="i2">Falls smitten by an older truth,<br/></span> <span class="i0">And the gray world wins back to her<br/></span> <span class="i2">The rapture of her vanished youth.</span><br/></div> <div class="stanza"> <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</SPAN></span><span class="i0">Dead thoughts revive, and he that heeds<br/></span> <span class="i2">Shall hear, as by a spirit led,<br/></span> <span class="i0">A song among the golden reeds:<br/></span> <span class="i2">"The gods are vanished but not dead!"<br/></span></div> <div class="stanza"> <span class="i0">For one short hour; unseen yet near,<br/></span> <span class="i2">They haunt us, a forgotten mood,<br/></span> <span class="i0">A glory upon mead and mere,<br/></span> <span class="i2">A magic in the leafless wood.<br/></span></div> <div class="stanza"> <span class="i0">At morning we shall catch the glow<br/></span> <span class="i2">Of Dian's quiver on the hill,<br/></span> <span class="i0">And somewhere in the glades I know<br/></span> <span class="i2">That Pan is at his piping still.<br/></span></div> </div> <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />