THE sunshine died long ago, <br />Stifled out long ago, <br />And the waste of the world was grey, <br />And night was the best to know, <br />For night was to doze and forget the day, <br />To be warm and forgetting and still, <br />And need not the sun and know not the chill: <br />But oh, for the day that was darkened so! <br /> <br />Why gaze on a barren heaven, <br />Void and unchanging heaven, <br />On a barren earth in the grime, <br />And not a poor blossom given, <br />No thing that was thinking of sunshine time, <br />For a promise, a praise of the past? <br />And so one forgot the sunshine at last; <br />And sleep could avail, but what to have striven? <br /> <br />The sunshine wakes once anew, <br />Wakes and is born anew, <br />And the Age of the earth grows young, <br />And heaven has its youth for hue, <br />And hope is the tune of the spring-bird's tongue, <br />And the leaves in their prisons all hark, <br />And blossoms will know there is end of the dark: <br />One hour of the sun, and the spring-time grew! <br /> <br />The sunshine new on the earth, <br />Heaven to brighten the earth, <br />And the deathful dimness gone by, <br />The barren and winter dearth! <br />And to-day is the best till the next is nigh, <br />And to-night is to-morrow begun, <br />To-morrow, when blossoms remember the sun! <br />Dead hopes, are ye born with the blossoms birth?<br /><br />Augusta Davies Webster<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-first-spring-day-2/
