Sonnet

Summer, O Summer, fill thy shadowy trees

With a reprieve of cooling sacrament

Before we die among the mysteries;

Loosen our wreaths and let us be content

To bow our heads before thy flower-bells

Beneath whose mould we too shall soon be spent, --

Lovers desiring this and little else:

Thy laurel now; not ours, thy firmament

Of blue in which to dedicate our blood

To earth, our vernal meaning now but meant,

Like the least meaning of thy smallest bud,

To go the way the earlier seasons went,

Breath is our fee and dividend and cost:

So let us grant the forfeit and be lost!