Now Spring Has Clad The Grove In Green – Compass Songs

by Robert Burns

Now spring has clad the grove in green,

And strew’d the lea wi’ flowers;

The furrow’d, waving corn is seen

Rejoice in fostering showers:

While ilka thing in nature join

Their sorrows to forego,

O why thus all alone are mine

The weary steps of woe?

The trout in yonder wimpling burn

That glides, a silver dart,

And safe beneath the shady thorn

Defies the angler’s art —

My life was ance that careless stream,

That wanton trout was I;

But love, wi’ unrelenting beam,

Has scorch’d my fountains dry.

The little flow’ret’s peaceful lot,

In yonder cliff that grows,

Which, save the linnet’s flight, I wot,

Nae ruder visit knows,

Was mine; till love has o’er me past,

And blighted a’ my bloom,

And now beneath the with’ring blast

My youth and joy consume.

The waken’d lav’rock warbling springs,

And climbs the early sky,

Winnowing blythe her dewy wings

In morning’s rosy eye:

As little reckt I sorrow’s power,

Until the flowery snare

O’ witching love, in luckless hour,

Made me the thrall o’ care.

O had my fate been Greenland snows,

Or Afric’s burning zone,

Wi’ man and nature leagu’d my foes,

So Peggy ne’er I’d known!

The wretch whase doom is, “hope nae mair,”

What tongue his woes can tell!

Within whase bosom, save despair,

Nae kinder spirits dwell.

 Compass Songs is an ongoing series of works by poets that I enjoy. Poetry, as the Zen Masters have said, is like a finger pointing to the moon. It speaks the unspeakable.

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The post Now Spring Has Clad The Grove In Green – Compass Songs written by Andrew Furst appeared on Andrew Furst.