There Blooms No Bud in May / Walter de la Mare

There Blooms No Bud in May

 
There blooms no bud in May
Can for its white compare
With snow at break of day,
On fields forlorn and bare.

For shadow it hath rose,
Azure, and amethyst;
And every air that blows
Dies out in beauteous mist.

It hangs the frozen bough
With flowers on which the night
Wheeling her darkness through
Scatters a starry light.

Fearful of its pale glare
In flocks the starlings rise;
Slide through the frosty air,
And perch with plaintive cries.

Only the inky rook,
Hunched cold in ruffled wings,
Its snowy nest forsook,
Caws of unnumbered Springs.

~~
Walter de la Mare
From The Listeners, and other poems, 1912

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]

Walter de la Mare biography

Jon Barton, Snow at Morning Hill, Peebles, UK, 2018. CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.