SEASONS

Art by ALBANI, Francesco (b. 1578, Bologna, 1660, Bologna)

For winter's rains and ruins are over,
And all the season of snows and sins;
The days dividing lover and lover,
the light that loses, the night that wins;
And time remembered is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
And in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom the spring begins.

Algernon Charles Swinburne  (1837-1909) Atalanta in Calydon (1865)

Bright was the summer's noon when quickening steps
Followed each other till a dreary moor
Was crossed, a bare ridge clomb, upon whose top
Standing alone, as from a rampart's edge,
I overlooked the bed of Windermere,
Like a vast river, stretching in the sun.

—William Wordsworth (1770–1850) "Summer Vacation," The Prelude (1805)  

TO AUTUMN
by William Blake

O Autumn, laden with fruit, and stain'd
With the blood of the grape, pass not, but sit
Beneath my shady roof; there thou may'st rest,
And tune thy jolly voice to my fresh pipe,
And all the daughters of the year shall dance!
Sing now the lusty song of fruits and flowers.

"The narrow bud opens her beauties to
The sun, and love runs in her thrilling veins;
Blossoms hang round the brows of Morning, and
Flourish down the bright cheek of modest Eve,
Till clust'ring Summer breaks forth into singing,
And feather'd clouds strew flowers round her head.

"The spirits of the air live in the smells
Of fruit; and Joy, with pinions light, roves round
The gardens, or sits singing in the trees."
Thus sang the jolly Autumn as he sat,
Then rose, girded himself, and o'er the bleak
Hills fled from our sight; but left his golden load.

 The Dead of Winter

In the Silence there's a motion
bringing message of the mirth
of the ever-changing notion
of the never-ending birth!
After winter, spring will follow!
After dead of night, there's light!
Don't forget when things seem hollow,
there's a reason why we fight!

Copyright © 2001 Eva Anderson