Source: Project Gutenberg #3021 / #3026 / #29345
Source URL: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3021
Public domain basis: Frost’s first three books (1913–1916) via PG; US public domain.
Coverage: Complete individual poem extracted from parent edition frost-early-poems at bytes 8595-10775; checksum 2b14ba980dbeae167e4955a49d829de4c1d9e83760dc553d4815c0c83035dfe5.


# Wind and Window Flower

Wind and Window Flower

    LOVERS, forget your love,
    And list to the love of these,
    She a window flower,
    And he a winter breeze.
    When the frosty window veil
    Was melted down at noon,
    And the cagèd yellow bird
    Hung over her in tune,
    He marked her through the pane,
    He could not help but mark,
    And only passed her by,
    To come again at dark.
    He was a winter wind,
    Concerned with ice and snow,
    Dead weeds and unmated birds,
    And little of love could know.
    But he sighed upon the sill,
    He gave the sash a shake,
    As witness all within
    Who lay that night awake.
    Perchance he half prevailed
    To win her for the flight
    From the firelit looking-glass
    And warm stove-window light.
    But the flower leaned aside
    And thought of naught to say,
    And morning found the breeze
    A hundred miles away.

To the Thawing Wind (audio)

    COME with rain, O loud Southwester!
    Bring the singer, bring the nester;
    Give the buried flower a dream;
    Make the settled snow-bank steam;
    Find the brown beneath the white;
    But whate'er you do to-night,
    Bathe my window, make it flow,
    Melt it as the ices go;
    Melt the glass and leave the sticks
    Like a hermit's crucifix;
    Burst into my narrow stall;
    Swing the picture on the wall;
    Run the rattling pages o'er;
    Scatter poems on the floor;
    Turn the poet out of door.

A Prayer in Spring

    OH, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;
    And give us not to think so far away
    As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
    All simply in the springing of the year.
    Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
    Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
    And make us happy in the happy bees,
    The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.
    And make us happy in the darting bird
    That suddenly above the bees is heard,
    The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
    And off a blossom in mid air stands still.
    For this is love and nothing else is love,
    The which it is reserved for God above
    To sanctify to what far ends He will,
    But which it only needs that we fulfil.