Spring Fever

A soft wind
Blows from the evening star,
Blows through budding maples up to my window
It brings upon its breast, from the April streets,
Voices of children
And of lovers leaning tenderly under new leaves.

A dog bays…plaintive, distant, insistent.
Some fibre of him remembers,
As the scented moon floats,
Primitive trails and mating calls
Before he followed man.
He bays again and I tremble a little
With wildness, loneness, longing.

There is music somewhere
Mellowness…mute…everywhere,
Febrile passion pervading the night
Like a tincture, ancient, ineffable
A tincture eternally restive.

Antony! it was this that drove you
To Egypt and Cleopatra.
Abelard, your God was too weak for it!