Think not that summer ends but rather say
Bright June lies sleeping in December's arms;
That in the shining pattern of today
Are yesterdays of beauty with their charms:
For summer mounts on spurs of columbine,
Her fragrance lingers in a lilied-grot;
A lark-flute rhapsody is ever mine
Recorded on the microfilm of thought.
The hollyhocks still hold their tapers high;
A moon canoe glides smoothly on the lake;
In winter's sculptured silence killdeer cry
And redbirds flash a challenge from the brake--
When the last darkness falls, we wake at dawn
To hear eternal summer's antiphon.
