Come when the rains Have glazed the snow and clothed the trees with ice, While the slant sun of February pours Into the bowers a flood of light. Approach! The incrusted surface shall upbear thy steps And the broad arching portals of the grove Welcome thy entering.
Early, as well as late, Rise with the sun, and set in the same bowers
When Nature gives a gorgeous rose, Or yields the simplest fern, She writes this motto on the leaves, "To whom it may concern!" And so it is the poet comes And revels in her bowers, And, though another hold the land, Is owner of the flowers.
Pale in her fading bowers the Summer stands,Like a new Niobe with claspèd hands,Silent above the flowers, her children lost,Slain by the arrows of the early Frost.
Tis moonlight, summer moonlight, All soft and still and fair; The solemn hour of midnight Breathes sweet thoughts everywhere, But most where trees are sending Their breezy boughs on high, Or stooping low are lending A shelter from the sky. And there in those wild bowers A lovely form is laid; Green grass and dew-steeped flowers Wave gently round her head.
Was never secret history but birds tell it in the bowers.
Autumn, in his leafless bowers, is waiting for the winter's snow.
