Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SUMMER (1), by CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SUMMER (1), by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Hark to the song of greeting
Last Line: Of some far distant clime.
Alternate Author Name(s): Alleyne, Ellen; Rossetti, Christina
Subject(s): Summer


Hark to the song of greeting! the tall trees
Murmur their welcome in the southern breeze.
Amid the thickest foliage many a bird
Sits singing, their shrill matins scarcely heard
One by one, but all together
Welcoming the sunny weather.
In every bower hums a bee
Fluttering melodiously.
Murmurs joy in every brook,
Rippling with a pleasant look.
What greet they with their guileless bliss?
What welcome with a song like this?

See in the south a radiant form,
Her fair head crowned with roses;
From her bright foot-path flies the storm;
Upon her breast reposes
Many an unconfined tress,
Golden, glossy, motionless.
Face and form are love and light,
Soft ineffable, yet bright,
All her path is strewn with flowers,
Round her float the laughing Hours,
Heaven and earth make joyful din,
Welcoming sweet Summer in.

And now she alights on the Earth
To play with her children the flowers;
She touches the stems, and the buds have birth,
And gently she trains them in bowers.
And the bees and the birds are glad,
And the wind catches warmth from her breath,
And around her is nothing sad,
Nor any traces of death.
See now she lays her down
With roses for her crown,
With jessamine and myrtle
Forming her fragrant kirtle;
Conquered by softest slumbers
No more the hours she numbers,
The hours that intervene
Ere she may wing her flight
Far from this smiling scene
With all her love and light,
And leave the flowers and the summer bowers
To wither in autumn and winter hours.

And must they wither then?
Their life and their perfume
Sinking so soon again
Into their earthly tomb?
Let us bind her as she lies
Ere the fleeting moment flies;
Hand, and foot and arm and bosom,
With a chain of bud and blossom;
Twine red roses around her hands,
Round her feet twine myrtle bands.
Heap up flowers higher, higher,
Tulips like a glowing fire,
Clematis of milky whiteness,
Sweet geraniums' varied brightness,
Honeysuckle, commeline,
Roses, myrtle, jessamine;
Heap them higher, bloom on bloom,
Bury her as in a tomb.

But alas! they are withered all,
And how can dead flowers bind her?
She pushes away her pall,
And she leaves the dead behind her:
And she flies across the seas
To gladden for a time
The blossoms and the bees
Of some far distant clime.




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