In the month of the long decline of roses | |
I, beholding the summer dead before me, | |
Set my face to the sea and journeyed silent, | |
Gazing eagerly where above the sea-mark | |
Flame as fierce as the fervid eyes of lions | |
Half divided the eyelids of the sunset; | |
Till I heard as it were a noise of waters | |
Moving tremulous under feet of angels | |
Multitudinous, out of all the heavens; | |
10 | Knew the fluttering wind, the fluttered foliage, |
Shaken fitfully, full of sound and shadow; | |
And saw, trodden upon by noiseless angels, | |
Long mysterious reaches fed with moonlight, | |
Sweet sad straits in a soft subsiding channel, | |
Blown about by the lips of winds I knew not, | |
Winds not born in the north nor any quarter, | |
Winds not warm with the south nor any sunshine; | |
Heard between them a voice of exultation, | |
‘Lo, the summer is dead, the sun is faded, | |
20 | Even like as a leaf the year is withered, |
All the fruits of the day from all her branches | |
Gathered, neither is any left to gather. | |
All the flowers are dead, the tender blossoms, | |
All are taken away; the season wasted, | |
Like an ember among the fallen ashes. | |
Now with light of the winter days, with moonlight, | |
Light of snow, and the bitter light of hoarfrost, | |
We bring flowers that fade not after autumn, | |
Pale white chaplets and crowns of latter seasons, | |
30 | Fair false leaves (but the summer leaves were falser), |
Woven under the eyes of stars and planets | |
When low light was upon the windy reaches | |
Where the flower of foam was blown, a lily | |
Dropt among the sonorous fruitless furrows | |
And green fields of the sea that make no pasture: | |
Since the winter begins, the weeping winter, | |
All whose flowers are tears, and round his temples | |
Iron blossom of frost is bound for ever.’ |