Page:Poems Craik.djvu/214

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196
SUMMER GONE.
Poor robin, driven in by rain-storms wild
  To lie submissive under household hands
  With beating heart that no love understands,
And scarèd eye, like a child
Who only knows that he is all alone
And summer 's gone;

Pale leaves, sent flying wide, a frightened flock
  On which the wolfish wind bursts out, and tears
  Those tender forms that lived in summer airs
Till, taken at this shock,
They, like weak hearts when sudden grief sweeps by,
Whirl, drop, and die:—

All these things, earthy, of the earth—do tell
  This earth's perpetual story; we belong
  Unto another country, and our song
Shall be no mortal knell;
Though all the year's tale, as our years run fast,
Mourns, "summer 's past."

O love immortal, perpetual youth,
  Whether in budding nooks it sits and sings
  As hundred poets in a hundred springs,
Or, slaking passion's drouth,
In wine-press of affliction, ever goes
Heavenward, through woes: