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I
(MINOR)
THE ANCIENT memories buried lie, | |
| And the olden fancies pass; | |
| The old sweet flower-thoughts wither and fly, | |
| And die as the April cowslips die, | |
| That scatter the bloomy grass. | 5 |
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| All dead, my dear! And the flowers are dead, | |
| And the happy blossoming spring; | |
| The winter comes with its iron tread, | |
| The fields with the dying sun are red, | |
| And the birds have ceas’d to sing. | 10 |
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| I trace the steps on the wasted strand | |
| Of the vanish’d springtime’s feet: | |
| Wither’d and dead is our Fairyland, | |
| For Love and Death go hand in hand | |
| Go hand in hand, my sweet! | 15 |
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II
(MAJOR)
OH, what shall be the burden of our rhyme, | |
| And what shall be our ditty when the blossom’s on the lime? | |
| Our lips have fed on winter and on weariness too long: | |
| We will hail the royal summer with a golden-footed song! | |
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| O lady of my summer and my spring, | 20 |
| We shall hear the blackbird whistle and the brown sweet throstle sing, | |
| And the low clear noise of waters running softly by our feet, | |
| When the sights and sounds of summer in the green clear fields are sweet. | |
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| We shall see the roses blowing in the green, | |
| The pink-lipp’d roses kissing in the golden summer sheen; | 25 |
| We shall see the fields flower thick with stars and bells of summer gold, | |
| And the poppies burn out red and sweet across the corn-crown’d wold. | |
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| The time shall be for pleasure, not for pain; | |
| There shall come no ghost of grieving for the past betwixt us twain; | |
| But in the time of roses our lives shall grow together, | 30 |
| And our love be as the love of gods in the blue Olympic weather. | |
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