UNDER the snow in the dark and the cold
   A pale little tendril was humming;
Sweetly it sang, 'neath the frozen mold
   Of the beautiful days that were coming.

"How foolish your songs," said a lump of clay;
   "What is there, I ask, to prove them?
Just look at the walls between you and the day--
   How can you have power to remove them?"

But under the ice and under the snow
   The pale little sprout kept singing,
"I cannot tell how, but I know, I know--
   I know what the days are bringing;

"Birds and blossoms and buzzing bees,
   Blue, blue skies above me;
Bloom on the meadow, and buds on the trees,
   And the great, glad sun to love me."

Then a pebble spoke up: "You are quite absurd,"
   It said, "with your song's insistence;
For I never saw a tree or a bird,
   So of course there are none in existence."

But "I know, I know," the tendril cried
   In beautiful, sweet unreason,
Till lo, from its prison glorified
   It burst in the glad spring season!

By Ella Wheeler Wilcox