Hazel Blossoms

THE SUMMER warmth has left the sky,
The summer songs have died away;
And, withered, in the footpaths lie
The fallen leaves, but yesterday
With ruby and with topaz gay.

The grass is browning on the hills;
No pale, belated flowers recall
The astral fringes of the rills,
And drearily the dead vines fall,
Frost-blackened, from the roadside wall.

Yet through the gray and sombre wood,
Against the dusk of fir and pine,
Last of their floral sisterhood,
The hazel-s yellow blossoms shine,
The tawny gold of Afric-s mine!

Small beauty hath my unsung flower,
For spring to own or summer hail;
But, in the season-s saddest hour,
To skies that weep and winds that wail
Its glad surprisals never fail.

O days grown cold! O life grown old
No rose of June may bloom again;
But, like the hazel-s twisted gold,
Through early frost and latter rain
Shall hints of summer-time remain.

And as within the hazel-s bough
A gift of mystic virtue dwells,
That points to golden ores below,
And in dry desert places tells
Where flow unseen the cool, sweet wells,

So, in the wise Diviner-s hand,
Be mine the hazel-s grateful part
To feel, beneath a thirsty land,
The living waters thrill and start,
The beating of the rivulet-s heart!

Sufficeth me the gift to light
With latest bloom the dark, cold days;
To call some hidden spring to sight
That, in these dry and dusty ways,
Shall sing its pleasant song of praise.

O Love! the hazel-wand may fail,
But thou canst lend the surer spell,
That, passing over Baca-s vale,
Repeats the old-time miracle,
And makes the desert-land a well.