It is spring by now in the world, but here
The doom of winter on all the year;
A little brown bird flits to and fro,
Watching perhaps for a rift of blue
Where the mists divide and the sky looks through,
Or a crocus-bell in the half-thawed snow.
Little brown bird, have you no nest here
When winds blow cold in the long starlight?
Never a tree, and the fields so white —
And are you ever a wayfarer?
It is spring by now in the vales below,
And why do you stay in the world of snow?