THE
PENSIONERS
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WE are
the pensioners of Spring,
And take the largess
of her hand
When vassal warder winds unbar
The wintry portals
of her land;
The lonely shadow-girdled winds,
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Her
seraph almoners, who keep
This little life in flesh and bone
With meagre portions
of white sleep.
Then all year through with starveling care
We go on some fool’s
idle quest,
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And
eat her bread and wine in thrall
To a fool’s
shame with blind unrest.
Until her April train goes by,
And then because
we are the kin
Of every hill flower on the hill
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| We
must arise and walk therein.
Because her heart as our own heart,
Knowing the same
wild upward stir,
Beats joyward by eternal laws,
We must arise and
go with her;
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Forget
we are not where old joys
Return when dawns
and dreams retire;
Make grief a phantom of regret,
And fate the henchman
of desire;
Divorce unreason from delight;
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Learn
how despair is uncontrol,
Failure the shadow of remorse,
And death a shudder
of the soul.
Yea, must we triumph when she leads.
A little rain before
the sun,
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A breath
of wind on the road’s dust,
The sound of trammeled
brooks undone,
Along red glinting willow stems
The year’s
white prime, on bank and stream
The haunting cadence of no song
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| And
vivid wanderings of dream,
A range of low blue hills, the far
First whitethroat’s
ecstasy unfurled:
And we are overlords of change,
In the glad morning
of the world,
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Though we should fare as they whose life
Time takes within
his hands to wring
Between the winter and the sea,
The weary pensioners
of Spring. |
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