| |
| SO many cares to vex the day, | |
| So many fears to haunt the night, | |
| My heart was all but weaned away | |
| From every lure of old delight. | |
| Then summer came, announced by June, | 5 |
| With beauty, miracle and mirth. | |
| She hung aloft the rounding moon, | |
| She poured her sunshine on the earth, | |
| She drove the sap and broke the bud, | |
| She set the crimson rose afire. | 10 |
| She stirred again my sullen blood, | |
| And waked in me a new desire. | |
| Before my cottage door she spread | |
| The softest carpet nature weaves, | |
| And deftly arched above my head | 15 |
| A canopy of shady leaves. | |
| Her nights were dreams of jeweled skies, | |
| Her days were bowers rife with song, | |
| And many a scheme did she devise | |
| To heal the hurt and soothe the wrong. | 20 |
| For on the hill or in the dell, | |
| Or where the brook went leaping by | |
| Or where the fields would surge and swell | |
| With golden wheat or bearded rye, | |
| I felt her heart against my own, | 25 |
| I breathed the sweetness of her breath, | |
| Till all the cark of time had flown, | |
| And I was lord of life and death. | |
| |
