The Knickerbocker/Volume 13/Number 5/Lines on the Weather

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Sweet Summer, come! Why linger on the way,While, cold and sad, we mourn thy long delay?     What fearest thou?No more rude Winter scowls upon the land;The earth is fair; Spring, with a flowery hand,     Has decked her brow. The waving woods, arrayed in leafy green,Spread their green boughs, and court thy warm embrace,     Thy balmy air:The verdant lawn prepares the carpet soft,On which thy glowing foot has trod so oft,And quivering branches scatter from aloft     Their blossoms fair. Summer! oh haste, these blushing sweets to see,And budding fruits, hat perish but for thee!     Come beaming forthFromt he deep shade of ever-blooming bowers,And pour the spicy breath of southern flowers     O'er the sad north! This was a spring-tide wish, when breezes chill,And frosts untimely, shivered down the hill:Warm Summer heard the call, and straitway came,With eye of lightning, and with bredth of flame:The chill north winds, that met the sultry blast,Were driven back to arctic realms at last,     And sighing low,Swept round the frozen zone, o'er icy beds,Where Winter, stern and unrelenting, spreads     Eternal snow. And we, sad mortals! doomed to dire extremes,Are scorching, melting, 'neath the fervid beamsOf summer's fiery sun; and faintly call,'Oh! for some ice, to cool our lips withal!'Oh! for some clouds athwart the burning sky,Filled with kind showers; for mother earth is dry;And Thirst, insatiate, opes his panting mouth,To mutter vengence on on the flaming south!Ah, dire extremes! Scarce can cold winter leave us,Ere summer comes, with heat, drought, dust, to grieve us!