Spring In Vermont

A flash of hail and snow Drives through the mountains gray And sweeps the plain below, And beats the fragile windflower down; the dead leaf's darling is laid low. The gusts browbeat the trees And drive the sap to root; The beechen buds they freeze, And lash the blackberry shoot That clings unto the stalwart brier, and bends unbroken to its foot. The melted drifts return And brim the forest pool, Engreening moss and fern, And flooding to the full The pale Canadian violet, that loves the rising freshet cool. In the late afternoon Returns a Southern swallow; Then to the woodland soon Young men and maidens follow, And call across from glen to glen, 'Arbutus in the Windward Hollow!'