The Dead in Spring.

Long have I lain
Stiff stretched, bones cramped;
Staring unseeing from shrivelled .sockets
I have felt the dreary winter ooze down through the roots,
And the earth press upon me with tenfold weight.
While hard rains beat the ground above my head
Spattering clay, and drowning things.
Washing out bared roots, moving pebbles in small runnels.
The dark pines I heard swishing in agony
Till I settled deeper into the dark solid womb of earth that held me

* * * *

O you alive have never known the joyousness of quickening birth!
But lying here I have felt n quivering call creep through every root,
And each root's answering leap sending up bud or leaf.
And with this pulsing I essayed to rise but could not.
And there was a numbing pain in that I could not rise again
Because I was of Man.
The smallest soul stirs in the Spring.
All lifeless things recharge with life
Yet I can cease, .nor live, nor. creep,
Nor break my rigid sleepless sleep,
I, the forgotten Dead of men.

—Vesta Emanuel