My love, you are the spring to me
For I beneath your tender hand
Must swell and flow much as the sea
Which laps upon a pleasant strand,
And like a leafless, barren tree,
Behold! I am made green again!
O gentle Spring! How do I long
To fold your laughing youth to me,
To ply you with my secret song,
To bind you for eternity
Within these strands, my secret song,
To hold you for eternity!
O do not speak to me of June!
And endless hours of wasting heat
Which clamor for an Autumn tomb
To seal in Winter's frost and sleet,
That I may nourish in my womb
The fragile offspring of your seed
To yield to you each fruit, each grain
That, by your love of me, you've won,
When you at last return again.
Fair Spring, my tender, precious one,
I live to know the blesséd pain
Of mother suckling infant son,
That you might love me sweeter still,
And then at last to me be true
And yield not to Summer's will
Which every year I come to rue,
But from my bounty take your fill,
For I am very fond of you.
And as the earth, caressed by Spring,
Must laugh, and soft with trembling, lie,
Her verdant promise wakening,
Outstretched and yielding with a sigh,
Undressed of Winter's covering,
By he, the gift of March's sky,
My darling, so it is with I!
My darling, so it is with I!
George Chadderdon © 1994