SWEET song-flower of the Mayspring of our song, Be welcome to us, with loving thanks and praise To his good hand who travelling on strange ways Found thee forlorn and fragrant, lain along Beneath dead leaves that many a winter’s wrong Had rained and heaped through nigh three centuries’ maze Above thy Maybloom, hiding from our gaze The life that in thy leaves lay sweet and strong. For thine have life, while many above thine head Piled by the wind lie blossomless and dead. So now disburdened of such load above That lay as death’s own dust upon thee shed By days too deaf to hear thee like a dove Murmuring, we hear thee, bird and flower of love. |