54
The days are long again, the skies are blue;
the hedges are green again, the trees are green;
only the twigs of the elms are dark.
At night the wind is cold again;
but by day the snow of your absence is melting:
soon May will be here and you the queen of the May.

55
You tell me that you write only a little now.
I wrote this a year or two ago
about a girl whose stories I had read and wished to meet:
The traveller
whom a bird’s notes surprise—
his eyes
search the trees.
And when I met her she was plain enough.
So is the nightingale, they say—
and I am glad that you do not belong
to those whose beauty is all song.

56
Meeting often, we find we cannot meet enough
and words are counterfeit, silence only golden,
and streets at night are beautiful.
I find the valentines are true, the hearts and arrows—
sighs and misty eyes; and the old poems—
I find them true.