Eleanor Farjeon

Spring-Dawn

Heaven, the Spring’s coming true again!
Easterly over the sky’s spring-blue again
Passes a pearly flight of cloud--
Somewhere a dovecote is empty, surely!
And all of its birds have flown in a brood
Over the pure blue purely!

Westerly owl-grey gatherings
Linger a little yet:
Soon, owls! soon you will shrink
Out of the sun, I think,
Who even now turns silver-wet
The last of your ghostly gatherings.

Back to your windy barns again,
To your forsaken granaries,
Haunting, hating breed of the Winter!
For the grass in the mould begins to teem,
By every gate where the cuckoo flies
Primrose and fragile wind-flower enter,
And, lovelier truth than any dream,
Blue light is mirrored in ancient tarns again!