Classic Poem

XXXIX

When summer's end is nighing
 And skies at evening cloud,
I muse on change and fortune
 And all the feats I vowed
 When I was young and proud.

The weathercock at sunset
 Would lose the slanted ray,
And I would climb the beacon
 That looked to Wales away
 And saw the last of day.

From hill and cloud and heaven
 The hues of evening died;
Night welled through lane and hollow
 And hushed the countryside,
 But I had youth and pride.

And I with earth and nightfall
 In converse high would stand,
Late, till the west was ashen
 And darkness hard at hand,
 And the eye lost the land.

The year might age, and cloudy
 The lessening day might close,
But air of other summers
 Breathed from beyond the snows,
 And I had hope of those.

They came and were and are not
 And come no more anew;
And all the years and seasons
 That ever can ensue
 Must now be worse and few.

So here's an end of roaming
 On eves when autumn nighs:
The ear too fondly listens
 For summer's parting sighs,
 And then the heart replies.