BALLADE
OF SUMMER’S SLEEP
Sweet summer
is gone; they have laid her away—
The last sad hours that were
touched with her grace—
In the hush where the ghosts of the dead flowers play;
The sleep that is sweet of her
slumbering space
Let not a sight or a sound erase
5
Of the woe that hath fallen
on all the lands:
Gather, ye dreams, to her sunny face,
Shadow her head with your golden
hands.
The woods
that are golden and red for a day
Girdle the hills in a jewelled
case,
10
Like a girl’s strange mirth, ere the quick death slay
The beautiful life that he hath
in chase.
Darker and darker the shadows
pace
Out
of the north to the southern sands,
Ushers bearing the winter’s
mace:
15
Keep them away with your woven
hands.
The yellow
light lies on the wide wastes gray,
More bitter and cold than the
winds that race,
From the skirts of the autumn, tearing away,
This way and that way, the woodland
lace.
20
In the autumn’s cheek is a hectic
trace;
Behind
her the ghost of the winter stands;
Sweet summer will moan in her
soft gray place:
Mantle
her head with your glowing hands.
Envoi.
Till the
slayer be slain and the spring displace
25
The might of his arms with her
rose-crowned bands,
Let her heart not gather a dream that is base:
Shadow her head with your golden
hands.
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