 | Poems: New and Old |  |
How I love life! how fair and full it glides
In this dear land, where age-long peace abides!
This land of Nature's finest fashioning,
Where every month brings forth some lovely thing:
Where Spring goes like her streams, from March to June,
Dancing and glittering to the breeze's tune;
And Summer, like the rose in sunset skies,
From splendour into splendour softly dies;
Where Autumn, while she sings her harvest home,
Deep in her bosom hides the birth to come,
And Winter dreams, when the long nights are cold,
A dream of snowdrops and the bleating fold.
Ah! how I love it!—most of all the year
This perfect month when Summer's end is near.
For now July has set, and August dawns,
A stillness broods upon the yellowing lawns,
Now senses all are by enchantment laid
In golden sleep beneath a green-gold shade,
Until the hour when twilight's tender gloom
Is starred with flowers of magic faint perfume.
Now passions are forgot, now memory wakes
And out of old delight new vision makes,
While Time moves only where the rose-leaves fall,
And Death's a shade that never moves at all.
[He muses on in silence.]
In this dear land, where age-long peace abides!
This land of Nature's finest fashioning,
Where every month brings forth some lovely thing:
Where Spring goes like her streams, from March to June,
Dancing and glittering to the breeze's tune;
And Summer, like the rose in sunset skies,
From splendour into splendour softly dies;
Where Autumn, while she sings her harvest home,
Deep in her bosom hides the birth to come,
And Winter dreams, when the long nights are cold,
A dream of snowdrops and the bleating fold.
Ah! how I love it!—most of all the year
This perfect month when Summer's end is near.
For now July has set, and August dawns,
A stillness broods upon the yellowing lawns,
117
In golden sleep beneath a green-gold shade,
Until the hour when twilight's tender gloom
Is starred with flowers of magic faint perfume.
Now passions are forgot, now memory wakes
And out of old delight new vision makes,
While Time moves only where the rose-leaves fall,
And Death's a shade that never moves at all.
[He muses on in silence.]
| Poems: New and Old | |