Classic Poem

AUGUST BLOSSOMS

These are late August blossoms. Spring's glad days
Lie far behind us; early dreams have fled.
Not for us flames the golden crocus-bed:
No tender snowdrops lift their gentle gaze.
Roses are round us still, — and lily-sprays
Their fierce white fragrance on the warm airs shed;
Not all the flowers of sunburnt fields are dead,
Though dead is all the bloom that once was May's.

Across the years, across the weary years,
Alice, sweet early love, I look to thee,
And, gazing through a gathering mist of tears,
I watch the flower-crowned cliff, the sun-crowned sea:
Robed in strange light, thy girlish form appears,
And thine eyes draw and thine hand beckons me.