Poems of Nature, Poems Subjective and Reminiscent and Religious Poems, Complete

THE TRAILING ARBUTUS

     I wandered lonely where the pine-trees made
     Against the bitter East their barricade,
     And, guided by its sweet
     Perfume, I found, within a narrow dell,
     The trailing spring flower tinted like a shell
     Amid dry leaves and mosses at my feet.

     From under dead boughs, for whose loss the pines
     Moaned ceaseless overhead, the blossoming vines
     Lifted their glad surprise,
     While yet the bluebird smoothed in leafless trees
     His feathers ruffled by the chill sea-breeze,
     And snow-drifts lingered under April skies.

     As, pausing, o'er the lonely flower I bent,
     I thought of lives thus lowly, clogged and pent,
     Which yet find room,
     Through care and cumber, coldness and decay,
     To lend a sweetness to the ungenial day
     And make the sad earth happier for their bloom.

     1879.