O GIORNO FELICE!

MY store is spent; I am fain to borrow:
     Give me to drink of a vintage fine!
Pour me a draught—a draught of To-morrow,
     Brimming and fresh from a rock-cool shrine:
Nectar of earth,
For the longing and dearth
Of a heart still young,
That waiteth and waiteth a song unsung!

Glad be the strain!
In the cup pour no pain:
Leave at the brim not a taste of sorrow!
     Spring would I sing! For the bird flies free,
     The sap is astir in the oldest tree,
And the Maiden weaves,
Mid a laughter of leaves,
     The bud and the blossom of joys to be! . . .

Ay, Winter took all;
But I heard the Spring call,
And my heart, denied,
With a rapturous shiver—
Like that that makes eager the pulse of the river
     When something at last tells it Winter is past—
Awoke at the sound of her voice, and replied.
     A libation to Spring!—ah, quickly! pour fast!
She is there! She is here!—in the sky—on the sea—
In the Morning-Land waiting my heart and me!

"O Giorno Felice!" by Florence Earle Coates. Published in Harper's Monthly Magazine (July 1912), The Unconquered Air (1912) and Poems (1916) Volume I.