The birds are all a-singing, The skies are mad with winging; And quick the seed-shells crackle, crickle, crackling up the earth; The blossoms are thick in the trees, The pleasance is crowded with bees; The fountain up-leaps, the anemones Are shrill with the crickets in mirth. And under her window I waited; -- Alas! she was still in bed! My spring was all belated -- My sun is her golden head; And all my song Was: "Ding, dong, Summer is dead, Spring is dead, Winter is groaning along, The birds are singing all wrong; I would I were dead!" From out her dreams she drifted, The coverlet quick lifted, And lithe her white-rose body uncurl'd from her snow-white smock, And tall at the window, and fair, She combed her golden hair, -- So fair -- I would I were there, I were there, To dazzle me dead in each lock! "O madman, a dev'l to your dirging; For spring's in the earth and the sky; The rivers and meads are all surging With red bud-coifs thrown by; And every flower is shaking her head, A-sheveling her hair on a green leaf-bed, And making her comely and meet to be wed Yet all your song Is -- 'Ding, dong, Summer is dead, Spring is dead -- O my heart, and O my head! Go a-singing a silly song, All wrong, For all is dead, Ding, dong And I am dead, Dong!' . . . . . . . . . "O gold my sun up-waking, Your curtain-clouds a-breaking, Like runnels, rustling trees and merles, my songs out-sing your spring; I'll sing of the warm blush-rose, And mellow the honey that flows I' the bud that ripe to a full mouth blows, Or white the bloom-blossom with love that glows, And the gold-hair'd sun that makes me to sing. "And yet to your honour I'll twine A garland fresh and fine; And all the flowers that I shall pluck, The sweetest that bees suck, Shall be these songs of mine. Oh! such songs for me to sing, Ding, dong, Summer along, And spring; All along, long life along -- After death they still shall sing, Like to seeds of winter-thinking, All their bud-shells crankle-crinking, Shooting into summer song, Bursting into blossoming." | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...POSSUM SONG (A WARNING) by JAMES WELDON JOHNSON SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY: ALFRED MOIR by EDGAR LEE MASTERS SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY: AMI GREEN by EDGAR LEE MASTERS SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY: EUGENIA TODD by EDGAR LEE MASTERS SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY: JOSEPH DIXON by EDGAR LEE MASTERS NIGHT AND DAY: 4 by ISAAC ROSENBERG THE PRICE OF WOMEN by KAREN SWENSON |