| |
| YES, love, the Spring shall come again, | |
| But not as once it came: | |
| Once more in meadow and in lane | |
| The daffodils shall flame, | |
| The cowslips blow, but all in vain; | 5 |
| Alike, yet not the same. | |
| |
| The roses that we pluck’d of old | |
| Were dew’d with heart’s delight; | |
| Our gladness steep’d the primrose-gold | |
| In half its lovely light: | 10 |
| The hopes are long since dead and cold | |
| That flush’d the wind-flowers’ white. | |
| |
| Oh, who shall give us back our Spring? | |
| What spell can fill the air | |
| With all the birds of painted wing | 15 |
| That sang for us whilere? | |
| What charm reclothe with blossoming | |
| Our lives, grown blank and bare? | |
| |
| What sun can draw the ruddy bloom | |
| Back to hope’s faded rose? | 20 |
| What stir of summer re-illume | |
| Our hearts’ wreck’d garden-close? | |
| What flowers can fill the empty room | |
| Where now the nightshade grows? | |
| |
| ’T is but the Autumn’s chilly sun | 25 |
| That mocks the glow of May; | |
| ’T is but the pallid bindweeds run | |
| Across our garden way, | |
| Pale orchids, scentless every one, | |
| Ghosts of the summer day. | 30 |
| |
| Yet, if it must be so, ’t is well: | |
| What part have we in June? | |
| Our hearts have all forgot the spell | |
| That held the summer noon; | |
| We echo back the cuckoo’s knell, | 35 |
| And not the linnet’s tune. | |
| |
| What shall we do with roses now, | |
| Whose cheeks no more are red? | |
| What violets should deck our brow, | |
| Whose hopes long since are fled? | 40 |
| Recalling many a wasted vow | |
| And many a faith struck dead. | |
| |
| Bring heath and pimpernel and rue, | |
| The Autumn’s sober flowers: | |
| At least their scent will not renew | 45 |
| The thought of happy hours, | |
| Nor drag sad memory back unto | |
| That lost sweet time of ours. | |
| |
| Faith is no sun of summertide, | |
| Only the pale, calm light | 50 |
| That, when the Autumn clouds divide, | |
| Hangs in the watchet height,— | |
| A lamp, wherewith we may abide | |
| The coming of the night. | |
| |
| And yet, beneath its languid ray, | 55 |
| The moorlands bare and dry | |
| Bethink them of the summer day | |
| And flower, far and nigh, | |
| With fragile memories of the May, | |
| Blue as the August sky. | 60 |
| |
| These are our flowers: they have no scent | |
| To mock our waste desire, | |
| No hint of bygone ravishment | |
| To stir the faded fire: | |
| The very soul of sad content | 65 |
| Dwells in each azure spire. | |
| |
| I have no violets: you laid | |
| Your blight upon them all: | |
| It was your hand, alas! that made | |
| My roses fade and fall, | 70 |
| Your breath my lilies that forbade | |
| To come at Summer’s call. | |
| |
| Yet take these scentless flowers and pale, | |
| The last of all my year: | |
| Be tender to them; they are frail: | 75 |
| But if thou hold them dear, | |
| I ’ll not their brighter kin bewail, | |
| That now lie cold and sere. | |
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