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Under the sudden blue,
under the embrace of
the relenting air,
under the restored shadow of
the bird flying over
the sunny meadow,
the garden ground preserves
an unconvinced and
sullen face;
as though it yet remembered
the smite of frost, the wound
of snow.

Automatically and \without grace
it puts forth monosyllables of green,

answers Yes, or No, with a muddy daisy, or one celandine, or in ravel of last year's weeds lies winter-bound.
Poor cadet earth, so clumsy and so slow, And yet she answers with a spurt of crocus, and makes light of snow with snowdrops, and he celandine is burnished to reflect the sun. How like your absence and this winter have been! Long vapours stretched between me and your light, I saw you bright beyond them, but your shine fondled a field not mine. There was the illumination and there was the flight of shadows black as night;

but I looked round even on the same November clear-obscure of dun and gray and sallow and ash-colour and sere; how, laboring with clouds, can she keep pace with Air,

the firstborn element, tossing clouds to and fro? even my snows were white not long, and melted into dirt. Put out your hand. Feel me.

Though the spring is here I am still cold. Because of this, because of the winter's hurt, because I am of the earth element, dusky, stubborn, retentive,

slow to take hold, slow to loose hold, because even to my hair's ends I carry the scent of peat and of wood-smoke and of leaf-mold, and because I have been so long your tillage, so deeply your well-worked ground, you must be patient;

forgive me my lack of green, my lack of grace, my stammering blossoms one by one shoved out, and my face doubtful under the sudden blue, under the embrace of the relenting,

of the returning sun.

[Sylvia Towsend Warner]