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First Line: Who knows not that sweet gloom in spring
Last Line: And godhead glistens in those woods.
Alternate Author Name(s): Blunden, Edmund


WHO knows not that sweet gloom in spring,
That waiting gloom, that grave delight
In coming bloom,
In the first flight
Of bird, or thought, so wild of wing?

Now when round hedgerow's earthy claws
And painted shells that blanch near by
The dark grass swells
And from the eye
In buds each old black nest withdraws,

I well might go to my old haunt
And find the green brook brushing down
By celandine
And sedges brown
And hoppers' houses grimed and gaunt.

I well might go where the burnt ring
And rusty kettles year on year
Show life has yet
Her freedoms dear --
And I will go, another spring.

It may be, I shall then unfold
Why with such thrill and venturous joy
I crossed that rill,
A hurrying boy,
One Lenten Sunday ages old.

The mild mysterious spring was there,
The silk palm glowed, the vole peeped shy
Beside the road
Where you and I
Went on and blest the orchard air.

Then coming to the timbered cot
Of your good friend, how deep it strook
That he would lend
His longed-for book,
Old Walton, which forthwith he got,

And by the window gave to me.
The apples in the window-sill,
His humorous chin,
I see them still;
I see his good wife getting tea.

But where's the mystery? There it was;
And is it there? And can I find
Spring's dusk so fair
Now that this mind
Looks far beyond such floating floss?

O look not out; the young spring broods
Too wondering-warm on nest and bough,
Her dark eyes charm,
Her babe leaps now,
And godhead glistens in those woods.





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