University of Virginia Library

Search this document 
The Complete Poems of Christina Rossetti

A variorum edition: Edited, with textual notes and introductions, by R. W. Crump

expand sectionI. 
expand sectionII. 
expand sectionIII. 

Summer.

Come, cuckoo, come;
Come again, swift swallow;
Come and welcome; where you come
Summer's sure to follow.
June, the month of months,
Flowers and fruitage brings too;
When green trees spread shadiest boughs,
When each wild bird sings too.
May is scant and crude,
Generous June is riper;
Birds fall silent in July,
June has its woodland piper:
Rocks upon the maple-top
Homely-hearted linnet,
Full in hearing of his nest
And the dear ones in it.
If the year would stand
Still at June for ever,
With no further growth on land
Nor further flow of river,
If all nights were shortest nights
And longest days were all the seven,—
This might be a merrier world
To my mind to live in.