Synopsis

BY the side of a ruined terrace I sat in the early spring; The leaves were so young that the speckled hen-thrush Could be seen as she sat in the hawthorn bush, Falt'ring and faint at the cuckoo's cry; The cypress looked black against the green Of folded chestnut and budding beech, And up from the slumbering vale beneath Came now and again the ominous ring Of a ing bell for a village death. Yet a spirit of hope went whispering by, Through the wakening woods, o'er the daisied mead;