Poems (Eckley)/The Death of Summer

by Sophia May Eckley

THE DEATH OF SUMMER. "We all do fade as a leaf."

O—Leave the bier in the forest,
 Wrapped in the shrivelled leaves,
Go, leave the north-wind untying
 The withes of the golden sheaves.
For the day of vintage is over,
 The wine from the grape is born,
From the sheaf is trodden the grain,
 From the hedge the rose is torn.

Hark! to the funeral voices
 That whisper from leaf and rill,
While the chestnuts weave their leaf-shrouds,
 And shadows fall from the hill.
But what have the leaves to tell me,
 As they whisper through the boughs,
And cover the bier of summer,
 Ere the cruel frost-wind blows?

For mark! how frail is their tenure,
 As linked with tendril and stem;
Soon the death-wind will sever, and wide
 Over the wood scatter them.
What is the butterfly saying,
 As tangled now in the vine,
She flutters her frail gauzy wings,
 Vainly wooing the pale sun-shine?

Leaf, and rill, and forest gloom,
 All echo one song to me;
They say, "The summer is dying,
 And buried for ever to be."
That life's but a passing shadow,
 Or the mist of early day;
Or dying summer that we mourn,
 With her dead leaves blown away.

Bagni di Lucca, 1859.