Again the warm bare earth, the noon <br />That hangs upon her healing scars, <br />The midnight round, the great red moon, <br />The mother with her brood of stars, <br /> <br />The mist-rack and the wakening rain <br />Blown soft in many a forest way, <br />The yellowing elm-trees, and again <br />The blood-root in its sheath of gray. <br /> <br />The vesper-sparrow's song, the stress <br />Of yearning notes that gush and stream, <br />The lyric joy, the tenderness, <br />And once again the dream! the dream! <br /> <br />A touch of far-off joy and power, <br />A something it is life to learn, <br />Comes back to earth, and one short hour <br />The glamours of the gods return. <br /> <br />This life's old mood and cult of care <br />Falls smitten by an older truth, <br />And the gray world wins back to her <br />The rapture of her vanished youth. <br /> <br />Dead thoughts revive, and he that heeds <br />Shall hear, as by a spirit led, <br />A song among the golden reeds: <br />'The gods are vanished but not dead!' <br /> <br />For one short hour, unseen yet near, <br />They haunt us, a forgotten mood, <br />A glory upon mead and mere, <br />A magic in the leafless wood. <br /> <br />At morning we shall catch the glow <br />Of Dian's quiver on the hill, <br />And somewhere in the glades I know <br />That Pan is at his piping still.<br /><br />Archibald Lampman<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-return-of-the-year/
