Poem by Louise Imogen Guiney

The Still of the Year

UP from the willow-root
Subduing agonies leap;
The squirrel and the purple moth
Turn over amid their sleep;
The icicled rocks aloft
Burn saffron and blue alway,
And trickling and tinkling
The snows of the drift decay.
O mine is the head must hang
And share the immortal pang!
Winter or spring is fair;
Thaw ’s hard to bear.
Heigho! my heart ’s sick.

Sweet is cherry-time, sweet
A shower, a bobolink,
And the little trillium-blossom
Tucked under her leaf to think;
But here in the vast unborn
Is the bitterest place to be,
Till striving and longing
Shall quicken the earth and me.
What change inscrutable
Is nigh us, we know not well;
Gone is the strength to sigh
Either to live or die.
Heigho! my heart ’s sick.

1. The Japanese Anemone
2. Hylas
3. Sherman: “An Horatian Ode”
4. Saint Florent-le-Vieil
5. T. W. P. 1819-1892

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