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SO, some tempestuous morn in early June, | |
| When the year’s primal burst of bloom is o’er, | |
| Before the roses and the longest day— | |
| When garden-walks, and all the grassy floor, | |
| With blossoms, red and white, of fallen May, | 5 |
| And chestnut-flowers are strewn— | |
| So have I heard the cuckoo’s parting cry, | |
| From the wet field, through the vext garden-trees, | |
| Come with the volleying rain and tossing breeze: | |
| The bloom is gone, and with the bloom go I!… | 10 |
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| He hearkens not! light comer, he is flown! | |
| What matters it? next year he will return, | |
| And we shall have him in the sweet spring-days, | |
| With whitening hedges, and uncrumpling fern, | |
| And blue-bells trembling by the forest-ways, | 15 |
| And scent of hay new-mown. | |
| But Thyrsis never more we swains shall see! | |
| See him come back, and cut a smoother reed; | |
| And blow a strain the world at last shall heed— | |
| For Time, not Corydon, hath conquer’d thee…. | 20 |
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| Yes, thou art gone! and round me too the night | |
| In ever-nearing circle weaves her shade; | |
| I see her veil draw soft across the day, | |
| I feel her slowly chilling breath invade | |
| The cheek grown thin, the brown hair sprent with grey; | 25 |
| I feel her finger light | |
| Laid pausefully upon life’s headlong train;— | |
| The foot less prompt to meet the morning dew, | |
| The heart less bounding at emotion new, | |
| And hope, once crush’d, less quick to spring again…. | 30 |
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