Albert Ernest Stafford Smythe (1861–1947)

I SAT with May upon a midnight hill

Wrapped in a dusk of unremembered years

And thought on buried April—on the tears

And shrouds of March, and Youth’s dead daffodil

All withered on a mound of Spring. And still

The earth moved sweetly in her sleep, the Spheres

Wrought peace about her path, and for her ears

Chimed the high music of their blended will.

The God who dreamed the Earth, as I this frame

That makes me thrall to death and coward of birth—

Dreamed He not March below some vanished Moon—

Under an earlier Heaven’s auroral flame

The cosmic April flowering into mirth

Of May and joy of Universal June?