Saturday 24 November 2012

The Autumn Wind, Arthur Romney Green, 1901

From the collection Poems (Astolat Press, Guildford, 1901):

Poems,
Arthur Romney Green,
Astolat Press, Guildford, 1901



The sad, the wild, the Autumn Wind,
   All vanished sweet things
From the dark heaven I call to mind;
   The deathly odour clings
Of summers that are left behind
    On my tempestuous wings.

Awhile from leafy bough to bough
   I led the summer on;
And many a lover’s whispered vow
   Bore to the joyful sun;
But all the sweets of summer now
   The sweets of love are gone.

And now, to speak their general grief
   In one severer strain,
From places of the withered leaf
   I mourn the life, how vain,
The loves, the joys of men, how brief,
   Through all the night complain;

Their spring, how desperately sweet
   With promise – only given
The summer of a short conceit-
   Their leaf-like souls, how driven,
When earth is dead beneath their feet,
   On all the winds of heaven!


from Arbor Vitae,
Godfrey Blount, Fifield, 1910, 3rd edition


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