Explore "Go Back" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
When winds of March by the springtime bidden / Over the great earth race and shout, / Forth from my breast where it long hath hidden / My same old sorrow comes creeping out.
I think each winter -- its life is ended, / For it makes no stir while the snows lie deep. / I say to myself, 'Its soul has blended / Into the past where it lay asleep.'
But as soon as the sun, like some fond lover, / Smiles and kisses the earth's round cheeks, / This sad, sad sorrow throws off its cover, / And out of the depths of its anguish, speaks.
In every bud by the wayside springing / It finds a sword for its half-healed wounds; / In every note that the thrush is singing / It hears the saddest of minor sounds.
In the cup of gold that the sun is spilling / It finds, unsweetened, a drop of gall; / It sees through the warp that the Spring is filling, / The black threads twining in under it all.
Go back, O spring! till pain, forsaking / These haunts of sorrow, shall sink to rest. / Go back! go back! for my heart is breaking, / And the same old anguish hurts my breast.