Spring Under Cypresses

Under the cypresses, here in the stony
Woods of the mountain, the Spring too is sunny.
Rare Spring and early,
Birds singing sparely,
Pale sea-green hellebore smelling of honey.

Desolate, bright, in the blue Lenten weather,
Cones of the cypresses sparkle together,
Shining brightly,
Loosely and lightly,
The winds lift the branches and stir them and feather.

Where the sun pierces, the sharp boulders glitter
Desolate, bright; and the white moths flitter
Pallidly over
The bells that cover
With faint-smelling green all the fragrant brown litter.

Down in the plain the sun ripens for hours —
Look! in the orchards a mist of pale flowers-
Past the rose-hedges
A-bloom to the edges,
A smoke of blue olives, a vision of towers!

Here only hellebore grows, only shade is;
Surely the very Spring here half afraid is:
Out of her bosom
Drops not a blossom,
Mutely she passes through-she and her ladies.

Mutely? Ah, no; for a pause, and thou hearest
One bird who sings alone-one bird, the dearest.
Nay, who shall name it,
Call it or claim it?
Such birds as sing at all sing here their clearest.

Ah, never dream that the brown meadow-thrushes,
Finches, or happy larks sing in these hushes.
Only some poet
Of birds, flying to it,
Sings here alone, and is lost to the bushes.