 | The Poetical Works of John Payne |  |
AFTER LONG YEARS.
THE memories of summer are not dead,The roses and the bird-songs and the sun:
Though autumn shadow all the skies with dun
And all the golden year be overspread
With shrouding snows, yet roses have been red,
Linnets have sung and June has gilt the day;
And Springtide, peering through the winter's grey,
Calls up pale phantasms of the glories fled,
Primroses budding through the scarce-thawed rime,
A memory and a foreshadowing.
So with these firstlings of my second Spring,
March-prophecies of summer-tided rhyme,
After long years I bring as offering
To the pale memories of that pleasant time.
| The Poetical Works of John Payne | |