How fresh, oh Lord, how sweet and clean
Are thy returns! even as the flowers in spring;
   To which, besides their own demean,
The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring.
       Grief melts away
       Like snow in May,
   As if there were no such cold thing.

   Who would have thought my shriveled heart
Could have recovered greenness? It was gone
   Quite underground; as flowers depart
To see their mother-root, when they have blown,
       Where they together
       All the hard weather,
   Dead to the world, keep house unknown.

   These are thy wonders, Lord of power,
Killing and quickening, bringing down to hell
   And up to heaven in an hour;
Making a chiming of a passing-bell.
       We say amiss
       This or that is:
   Thy word is all, if we could spell.

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