O heart, your spring-time dream will idle prove, Your summer but forerun the autumn’s death, The flowery arches in the home of love Fall, crumbling, at a breath; And sick at last with that great sorrow’s shock, As some poor prisoner pressing to the bars His forehead, calls on mercy to unlock The chambers of the stars: You, turning off from life’s first mocking glow, Leaning it may be still on broken faith, Will down the vale of autumn gladly go To the chill winter, death. Hark! from the empty bosom of the grove I hear a sob, as one forlorn might pine— The white-limbed beauty of a god is thine, King of the seasons, and the night that hoods Thy brow majestic, brightest stars enweave— Thou surely canst not grieve. But only far away Mak’st stormy prophecies—well lift them higher, Till morning on the forehead of the day Presses a seal of fire. Dearer to me the scene Of nature shrinking from thy rough embrace, Than summer, with her rustling robe of green, Cool blowing in my face. The moon is up—how still the yellow beams That slantwise lie upon the stirless air, Sprinkled with frost, like pearl-entangled hair, O’er beauty’s cheek that streams. How the red light of Mars their pallor mocks. And the wild legend from the old time wins, Of sweet waves kissing all the drowning locks Of Ilia’s lovely twins. Come, Poesy, and with thy shadowy hands Cover me softly, singing all the night— In thy dear presence find I best delight; Even the saint that stands Tending the gate of heaven, involved in beams Of rarest glory, to my mortal eyes Pales from the blest insanity of dreams That round thee lies. Unto the dusky borders of the grove Where gray-haired Saturn, silent as a stone, Sat in his grief alone, Or where young Venus, searching for her love, Walked through the clouds, I pray, Bear me to-night away. Or wade with me through snows Drifted in loose fantastic curves aside, From humble doors where love and faith abide, And no rough winter blows, Chilling the beauty of affections fair, Cabined securely there. Where round their fingers winding the white slips That crown his forehead, on the grandsire’s knees, Sit merry children, teasing about ships Lost in the perilous seas; Or listening with a troublous joy, yet deep, To stories about battles, or of storms, Till weary grown, and drowsing into sleep, Slide they from out his arms. Where, by the log-heap fire, As the pane rattles and the cricket sings, I with the gray-haired sire May talk of vanished summer-times and springs, And harmlessly and cheerfully beguile The long, long hours— The happier for the snows that drift the while About the flowers.