Hazel Blossoms
By John Greenleaf Whittier
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 hazels yellow blossoms shine,
The tawny gold of Africs mine!
Small beauty hath my unsung flower,
For spring to own or summer hail;
But, in the seasons 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 hazels twisted gold,
Through early frost and latter rain
Shall hints of summer-time remain.
And as within the hazels 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 Diviners hand,
Be mine the hazels grateful part
To feel, beneath a thirsty land,
The living waters thrill and start,
The beating of the rivulets 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 Bacas vale,
Repeats the old-time miracle,
And makes the desert-land a well.