I <br /> <br />WHILE baby Spring sticks daisies in her hair, <br />Or Summer laughs with flushed triumphant face <br />We crush our heart rebellious at earth's grace, <br />And smile 'How, like the season, life is fair!' <br />But when the last leaf falls in the dull air, <br />And skies grow pale, and fields lie lost a space, <br />Ere their first furrow ploughs begin to trace, <br />And pastures shiver desolate and bare-- <br /> <br /> <br />Oh, then one breathes; at last free from the sway <br />Of selfish spring--from summer's insolent reign, <br />One dares to speak the truth--how all life's way <br />Is blank as autumn skies made grey with rain, <br />Most blank when most the glad year bade forbear <br />To mar her grace with our unveiled despair. <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />II <br /> <br />NOT Spring--too lavish of her bud and leaf-- <br />But Autumn, with sad eyes and brow austere, <br />When fields are bare, and woods are brown and sere, <br />And leaden skies weep their exhaustless grief. <br />Spring is so much too bright, since Spring is brief. <br />And in our hearts is autumn all the year, <br />Least sad when the wide pastures are most drear, <br />And fields grieve most robbed of the last gold sheaf. <br /> <br /> <br />For when the plough goes down the brown wet field, <br />A delicate doubtful throb of hope is ours-- <br />What if this coming Spring at last should yield <br />Joy, with her too profuse unasked-for flowers? <br />Not all our Springs of commonplace and pain <br />Have taught us now that autumn hope is vain.<br /><br />Edith Nesbit<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/pessimism-2/
