The youthful monarch’s heart grew light
To find what joy good deeds can shed;
To nurse the orphan buds that bent
Over each turf-piled monument,
Wherein the parent flowers lay dead
Who perished in that fight.

And as he roamed from day to day,
Atoning thus to flower and tree,
Flinging his lavish gold around
In countless yellow flowers, he found,
By gladsome-weeping April’s knee,
The modest maiden May.

Oh! she was young as angels are,
Ere the eternal youth they lead
Gives any clue to tell the hours
They’ve spent in heaven’s elysian bowers;
Ere God before their eyes decreed
The birth-day of some beauteous star.

Oh! she was fair as are the leaves
Of pale white roses, when the light
Of sunset, through some trembling bough,
Kisses the queen-flower’s blushing brow,
Nor leaves it red nor marble white,
But rosy-pale, like April eves.

Her eyes were like forget-me-nots,
Dropped in the silvery snowdrop’s cup,
Or on the folded myrtle buds,
The azure violet of the woods;
Just as the thirsty sun drinks up
The dewy diamonds on the plots.

And her sweet breath was like the sighs
Breathed by a babe of youth and love;
When all the fragrance of the south
From the cleft cherry of its mouth,
Meets the fond lips that from above
Stoop to caress its slumbering eyes.

He took the maiden by the hand,
And led her in her simple gown
Unto a hamlet’s peaceful scene,
Upraised her standard on the green;
And crowned her with a rosy crown
The beauteous Queen of all the land.

And happy was the maiden’s reign—­
For peace, and mirth, and twin-born love
Came forth from out men’s hearts that day,
Their gladsome fealty to pay;
And there was music in the grove,
And dancing on the plain.

And Labour carolled at his task,
Like the blithe bird that sings and builds
His happy household ’mid the leaves;
And now the fibrous twig he weaves,
And now he sings to her who gilds
The sole horizon he doth ask.

And Sickness half forgot its pain,
And Sorrow half forgot its grief;
And Eld forgot that it was old,
As if to show the age of gold
Was not the poet’s fond belief,
But every year comes back again.

The Year-King passed along his way: 
Rejoiced, rewarded, and content;
He passed to distant lands and new;
For other tasks he had to do;
But wheresoe’er the wanderer went,
He ne’er forgot his darling May.

He sent her stems of living gold
From the rich plains of western lands,
And purple-gushing grapes from vines
Born of the amorous sun that shines
Where Tagus rolls its golden sands,
Or Guadalete old.

And citrons from Firenze’s fields,
And golden apples from the isles
That gladden the bright southern seas,
True home of the Hesperides: 
Which now no dragon guards, but smiles,
The bounteous mother, as she yields.