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SUMMER GONE.
- SMALL wren, mute pecking at the last red plum
- Or twittering idly at the yellowing boughs
- Fruit‐emptied, over thy forsaken house,—
- Birdie, that seems to come
- Telling, we too have spent our little store,
- Our summer’s o’er:
- Poor robin, driven in by rain‐storms wild
- To lie submissive under household hands
- With beating heart that no love understands,
- And scarèd eye, like a child
- Who only knows that he is all alone
- And summer’s gone;
- Pale leaves, sent flying wide, a frightened flock
- On which the wolfish wind bursts out, and tears
- Those tender forms that lived in summer airs
- Till, taken at this shock,
- They, like weak hearts when sudden grief sweeps by,
- Whirl, drop, and die:—
- All these things, earthy, of the earth—do tell
- This earth’s perpetual story; we belong
- Unto another country, and our song
- Shall be no mortal knell;
- Though all the year’s tale, as our years run fast,
- Mourns, “summer’s past.”
- O love immortal, O perpetual youth,
- Whether in budding nooks it sits and sings
- As hundred poets in a hundred springs,
- Or, slaking passion’s drouth,
- In wine‐press of affliction, ever goes
- Heavenward, through woes:
- O youth immortal—O undying love!
- With these by winter fireside we’ll sit down
- Wearing our snows of honor like a crown;
- And sing as in a grove,
- Where the full nests ring out with happy cheer,
- “Summer is here.”
- Roll round, strange years; swift seasons, come and go;
- Ye leave upon us but an outward sign;
- Ye cannot touch the inward and divine,
- While God alone does know;
- There sealed till summers, winters, all shall cease
- In His deep peace.
- Therefore uprouse ye winds and howl your will;
- Beat, beat, ye sobbing rains on pane and door;
- Enter, slow‐footed age, and thou, obscure,
- Grand Angel—not of ill;
- Healer of every wound, where’er thou come,
- Glad, we’ll go home.
