A Spring Song in a Café

As gray, on the table, lay his hand
As the root of a tree in a barren land.
Or a rope that lowers the dead.

As gray as a gravestone was his head.
And as gray his beard as dusty grain;
But his eyes were as gray as the rain—

As gray as the rain that warms the snow.
The bridegroom who brings, to the grass below,
A breath of the wedding day.

O, his eyes were the gray of a rain in May
That shall quicken and mate a dead May-queen,
Shall waken and marry a queen of the May
When all the graves are green!