The Parting of Summer

Thou’rt bearing hence thy roses,Glad summer, fare thee well!Thou’rt singing thy last melodiesIn every wood and dell.

But ere the golden sunsetOf thy latest lingering day,Oh! tell me, o’er this checker’d earth,How hast thou pass’d away?

Brightly, sweet Summer! brightlyThine hours have floated by,To the joyous birds of the woodland boughs,The rangers of the sky;

And brightly in the forests,To the wild deer wandering free;And brightly, ’midst the garden flowers,To the happy murmuring bee:

But how to human bosoms,With all their hopes and fears,And thoughts that make them eagle-wings,To pierce the unborn years?

Sweet Summer! to the captiveThou hast flown in burning dreamsOf the woods, with all their whispering leaves,And the blue rejoicing streams;--

To the wasted and the wearyOn the bed of sickness bound,In swift delirious fantasies,That changed with every sound;--

To the sailor on the billows,In longings, wild and vain,For the gushing founts and breezy hills,And the homes of earth again!

And unto me, glad Summer!How hast thou flown to me?My chainless footstep naught hath keptFrom thy haunts of song and glee.

Thou hast flown in wayward visions,In memories of the dead--In shadows from a troubled heart,O’er thy sunny pathway shed:

In brief and sudden strivingsTo fling a weight aside--Midst these thy melodies have ceased,And all thy roses died.

But oh! thou gentle Summer!If I greet thy flowers once more,Bring me again the buoyancyWherewith my soul should soar!

Give me to hail thy sunshineWith song and spirit free;Or in a purer air than thisMay that next meeting be!