Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, AN INVALID'S PLEA, by ALICE CARY


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AN INVALID'S PLEA, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: O summer! My beautiful beautiful summer!
Last Line: Where never a rose of the roses shall die!
Subject(s): Life; Summer


O SUMMER! my beautiful, beautiful summer!
I look in thy face, and I long so to live;
But ah! hast thou room for an idle new-comer,
With all things to take, and with nothing to give?
With all things to take of thy dear loving-kindness,
The wine of thy sunshine, the dew of thy air;
And with nothing to give but the deafness and blindness
Begot in the depths of an utter despair?

As if the gay harvester meant but to screen her,
The black spider sits in her low loom, and weaves:
A lesson of trust to the tender-eyed gleaner
That bears in her brown arms the gold of the sheaves.
The blue-bird that trills her low lay in the bushes
Provokes from the robin a merrier glee;
The rose pays the sun for his kiss with her blushes,
And all things pay tithes to thee -- all things but me.

At even, the fire-flies trim with their glimmers
The wild, weedy skirts of the field and the wood;
At morning, those dear little yellow-winged swimmers,
The butterflies, hasten to make their place good.
The violet, always so white and so saintly;
The cardinal, warming the frost with her blaze;
The ant, keeping house at her sand-hearth so quaintly
Reproaches my idle and indolent ways.

When o'er the high east the red morning is breaking,
And driving the amber of starlight behind,
The land of enchantment I leave, on awaking,
Is not so enchanted as that which I find.
And when the low west by the sunset is flattered,
And locust and katydid sing up their best,
Peace comes to my thoughts, that were used to be fluttered,
Like doves when an eagle's wing darkens their nest.

The green little grasshopper, weak as we deem her,
Chirps, day in and out, for the sweet right to live;
And canst thou, O summer! make room for a dreamer,
With all things to take, and with nothing to give?
Room only to wrap her hot cheeks in thy shadows,
And all on thy daisy-fringed pillows to lie,
And dream of the gates of the glorious meadows,
Where never a rose of the roses shall die!





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