SUMMER’S SUN

 

Summer’s sun is golden

In the cooling afternoon.

The autumn breeze in August,

Fresh and gently floating

Among the sun-green leaves,

Wakens nameless longings

And tearless hopes that burgeon

Brimming on the verge.

The garden droops to ruin

In the lightless afternoon,

And my fair sunflowers fade

And lose their yellow hair,

Bending sleepy heads

Above a sagging fence.

The wind-chimes of summer

Chinkle sadly on the breeze

Blown in from other climes

Where heat of southern shores

Never blasts the glistening trees;

Where mists shroud the peninsula

In folds of quiet gray

And the sea-spray on the rocks

Never dries; where fluted redwood

Columns with Christmas crowns

Drop fresh tears through fog

Meandering from the bay

Into the forest bed

Where seeds of giants lie.

The twining bean and pumpkin

Wither in the leaf

And mildew under morning clouds;

The fruit, past ripe, is picked.

The earth, soaked and baked

By summer suns, is cracked

And gapes, hard and dry,

As fluttering leaves fall.

The monarch of the garden,

Not long past his prime,

Yet bows towards the ground

And prepares to die.

So summer leaves drop

From greenly dancing boughs

To presage barren bones

Of naked winter trees

As friendly faces fall

Away by ones and twos,

And friendly places molt

And fade like summer’s sun.