He halted in the wind, and — what was that
Far in the maples, pale, but not a ghost?
He stood there bringing March against his thought,
And yet too ready to believe the most.

“Oh, that’s the Paradise-in-Bloom,” I said;
And truly it was fair enough for flowers
Had we but in us to assume in March
Such white luxuriance of May for ours.

We stood a moment so, in a strange world,
Myself as one his own pretense deceives;
And then I said the truth (and we moved on).
A young beech clinging to its last year’s leaves.

Tossing his mane of snows in wildest eddies and tangles,
  Lion-like March cometh in, hoarse, with tempestuous breath,
Through all the moaning chimneys, and ’thwart all the hollows and angles
  Round the shuddering house, threating of winter and death.   

But in my heart I feel the life of the wood and the meadow
  Thrilling the pulses that own kindred with fibres that lift
Bud and blade to the sunward, within the inscrutable shadow,
  Deep in the oak’s chill core, under the gathering drift.

Nay, to earth’s life in mine some prescience, or dream, or desire
  (How shall I name it aright?) comes for a moment and goes —
Rapture of life ineffable, perfect — as if in the brier,
  Leafless there by my door, trembled a sense of the rose.