"The hat you on your heid shall wear Shall be o' the weather grey;
And aye when ye come into my sicht,
Sweetly breathing vernal air,
That with kind warmth doth repair
Winter's ruins; from whose breast
All the gums and spice of th' East
Borrow their perfumes; whose eye
Gilds the morn and clears the sky;
Whose disshevel'd tresses shed
Pearls upon the violet-bed;
On whose brow, with calm smiles drest,
The halcyon sits and builds her nest;
Beauty, youth, and endless spring,
Dwell upon thy rosy wing!
Thou, if stormy Boreas throws
Down whole forests when he blows,
With a pregnant, flowery birth,
Canst refresh the teeming earth;
If he nip the early bud;
If he blast what's fair and good;
If he scatter our choice flowers;
If he shake our halls and bowers;
If his rude breath threaten us,
Thou canst strike great Æolus,
And from him the grace obtain,
To bind him in an iron chain.
THOMAS CAREW, about 1600.
FROM THE ANGLO-SAXON OF KING ALFRED.
When the sun
Clearest shines
Serenest in the heaven,
Quickly are obscured
Over the earth
All other stars;
Because their brightness is not
Brightness at all
Compared with
The sun's light.
When mild blows
The southwestern wind
Under the clouds,
Then quickly grow
The flowers of the field,
Joyful that they may.
But the stark storm,
When it comes strong
From north and east,
It quickly takes away
The beauty of the rose.
And also the northern storm,
Constrained by necessity,
That it is strongly agitated,
Lashes the spacious sea
Against the shore.
REV. S. Fox's version, 800.
THE SUMMER MONTHS.
They come the merry summer months of beauty, love, and flowers;
They come the gladsome months that bring thick leafiness to bowers.
Up, up, my heart! and walk abroad, fling work and care aside;
Seek silent hills, or rest thyself where peaceful waters glide;
Or underneath the shadow vast of patriarchal trees,
See through its leaves the cloudless sky in rapt tranquillity.
The grass is soft; its velvet touch is grateful to the hand,
And, like the kiss of maiden love, the breeze is sweet and bland;
The daisy and the butter-cup are nodding courteously;
It stirs their blood with kindest love to bless and welcome thee.
And mark how with thine own thin locks, they now are silvery gray-
That blissful breeze is wantoning, and whispering "Be gay!"
There is no cloud that sails along the ocean of yon sky
But hath its own winged mariners to give it melody.
Thou see'st their glittering fans outspread, all gleaming like red gold,
And hark! with shrill pipe musical, their merry course they hold.
God bless them all, these little ones, who, far above this earth,
Can make a scoff of its mean joys, and vent a nobler mirth.
But soft! mine ear upcaught a sound-from yonder wood it came;
The spirit of the dim green glade did breathe his own glad name.
Yes, it is he! the hermit bird, that apart from all his kind,
Slow spells his beads monotonous to the soft western winds.
Cuckoo! cuckoo! he sings again-his notes are void of art.
But simplest strains do soonest sound the deep fount of the heart.
Good Lord! it is a gracious boon for thought-crazed wight like me,
To smell again these summer flowers beneath this summer tree!
To suck once more in every breath, their little souls away,
And feed my fancy with fond dreams of youth's bright summer day;
When rushing forth, like untamed colt, the reckless truant boy-
Wandered through green woods all day long, a mighty heart of joy!
I'm sadder now-I have had cause; but O I'm proud to think
That each pure joy-fount loved of yore I yet delight to drink;
Leaf, blossom, blade, hill, valley, stream, the calm unclouded sky,
Still mingle music with my dreams, as in the days gone by.
When summer's loveliness and light fall round me dark and cold,
I'll bear indeed life's heaviest curse, a heart that hath waxed old.
WILLIAM MOTHERWELL, 1797-1835.
Sweet day! so calm, so bright,
The bridal of the earth and sky;
The dew shall weep thy fall to-night,
For thou must die.
Sweet rose! whose hue, angry and brave,
Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye;
Thy root is ever in the grave,
And thou must die.
Sweet spring! full of sweet days and roses
A box where sweets compacted lie-
My music shows ye have your closes,
And all must die.
Only a sweet and virtuous soul,
Like season'd timber, never gives;
But though the whole world turn to coal,
Then chiefly lives.
GEORGE HERBERT, 1593-1632.
But as when the sun approaches toward the gates of the morning, he first opens a little eye of heaven, and sends away the spirits of darkness, and gives light to a cock, and calls up the lark to matins, and by-and-by gilds the fringes of a cloud, and peeps over the eastern hills, thrusting out his golden horns-like those which decked the brows of Moses, when he was forced to wear a vail, because himself had seen the face of God; and still, while a man tells the story, the sun gets up higher till he shows a fair face and full light, and then he shines one whole day, under a cloud often, and sometimes weeping great and little showers, and sets quickly: so is a man's reason and his life."
As when the cheerful sun elamping wide,
Glads all the world with his uprising ray,
And woos the widowed earth afresh to pride,
And paints her bosom with the flowery May-
His silent sister steals him quite way.
Wrapp'd in a sable cloud, from mortal eyes
The hasty stars at noon begin to rise,
And headlong to his early roost the sparrow flies.
But soon as he again disshadowed is,
Restoring the blind world his blemish'd sight-
As though another world were newly his;
The cozened birds busily take their flight,
And wonder at the shortness of the night,
So Mercy once again herself displays,
Out from her sister's cloud, and open lays
Those sunshine looks, whose beams would dim a thousand days
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