New and old a volume of verse Author:John Addington Symonds Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SPRING. White as peeled willow-wands ableach in May Are all her vestments, and her face is frail As wavering wind-flowers or the scented spray Of wild hed... more »ge-roses : on her head the pail Foams with fresh milk ; and tufts of galingale, With cowslips mingled and the pensive hue Of bluebells, neath her footing shed their dew. Singing she wends ; nor thought nor shade of care Dwells on her forehead; for the year is young : Black winter dies ; and in the tranquil air The promise of spring flowers, and carols sung By nightingales, and the glad cuckoo's tongue, Proclaim new life, and lengthening days, and nights Shortened to serve for sleepless Love's delights. SUMMER. O Sweet and strange what time grey morning steals Over the misty flats, and gently stirs Bee-laden limes and pendulous abeles, To brush the dew-bespangled gossamers From meadow grasses, and beneath black firs In limpid streamlets or translucent lakes To bathe amid dim heron-haunted brakes ! O sweet and sumptuous at height of noon Languid to lie on scented summer-lawns, Fanned by faint breezes of the breathless June ; To watch the timorous and trooping fawns, Dappled like tenderest clouds in early dawns, Forth from their ferny covert glide to drink And cool lithe limbs beside the river's brink ! O strange and sad ere daylight disappears, To hear the creaking of the homeward wain, Drawn by its yoke of tardy-pacing steers, Neath honeysuckle hedge and tangled lane ; To breathe faint scent of roses on the wane By cottage doors, and watch the mellowing sky Fade into saffron hues insensibly ! HARVEST. The west is purple, and a golden globe, Sphered with new-risen moonlight, hangs between The skirts of evening's amethystine robe And the round w...« less