SHE wanders in the April woods, <br /> That glisten with the fallen shower; <br />She leans her face against the buds, <br /> She stops, she stoops, she plucks a flower. <br /> She feels the ferment of the hour: <br />She broodeth when the ringdove broods; <br /> The sun and flying clouds have power <br />Upon her cheek and changing moods. <br /> She cannot think she is alone, <br /> As o’er her senses warmly steal <br /> Floods of unrest she fears to own, <br /> And almost dreads to feel. <br /> <br />Among the summer woodlands wide <br /> Anew she roams, no more alone; <br />The joy she fear’d is at her side, <br /> Spring’s blushing secret now is known. <br /> The primrose and its mates have flown, <br />The thrush’s ringing note hath died; <br /> But glancing eye and glowing tone <br />Fall on her from her god, her guide. <br /> She knows not, asks not, what the goal, <br /> She only feels she moves towards bliss, <br /> And yields her pure unquestioning soul <br /> To touch and fondling kiss. <br /> <br />And still she haunts those woodland ways, <br /> Though all fond fancy finds there now <br />To mind of spring or summer days, <br /> Are sodden trunk and songless bough. <br /> The past sits widow’d on her brow, <br />Homeward she wends with wintry gaze, <br /> To walls that house a hollow vow, <br />To hearth where love hath ceas’d to blaze: <br /> Watches the clammy twilight wane, <br /> With grief too fix’d for woe or tear; <br /> And, with her forehead ’gainst the pane, <br /> Envies the dying year.<br /><br />Alfred Austin<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/agatha/
