Love's Autumn

YES, love, the Spring shall come again,  
 But not as once it came:  
Once more in meadow and in lane  
 The daffodils shall flame,  
The cowslips blow, but all in vain;
 Alike, yet not the same.  
 
The roses that we pluck’d of old  
 Were dew’d with heart’s delight;  
Our gladness steep’d the primrose-gold  
 In half its lovely light:
The hopes are long since dead and cold  
 That flush’d the wind-flowers’ white.  
 
Oh, who shall give us back our Spring?  
 What spell can fill the air  
With all the birds of painted wing
 That sang for us whilere?  
What charm reclothe with blossoming  
 Our lives, grown blank and bare?  
 
What sun can draw the ruddy bloom  
 Back to hope’s faded rose?
What stir of summer re-illume  
 Our hearts’ wreck’d garden-close?  
What flowers can fill the empty room  
 Where now the nightshade grows?  
 
’T is but the Autumn’s chilly sun
 That mocks the glow of May;  
’T is but the pallid bindweeds run  
 Across our garden way,  
Pale orchids, scentless every one,  
 Ghosts of the summer day.
 
Yet, if it must be so, ’t is well:  
 What part have we in June?  
Our hearts have all forgot the spell  
 That held the summer noon;  
We echo back the cuckoo’s knell,
 And not the linnet’s tune.  
 
What shall we do with roses now,  
 Whose cheeks no more are red?  
What violets should deck our brow,  
 Whose hopes long since are fled?
Recalling many a wasted vow  
 And many a faith struck dead.  
 
Bring heath and pimpernel and rue,  
 The Autumn’s sober flowers:  
At least their scent will not renew
 The thought of happy hours,  
Nor drag sad memory back unto  
 That lost sweet time of ours.  
 
Faith is no sun of summertide,  
 Only the pale, calm light
That, when the Autumn clouds divide,  
 Hangs in the watchet height,—  
A lamp, wherewith we may abide  
 The coming of the night.  
 
And yet, beneath its languid ray,
 The moorlands bare and dry  
Bethink them of the summer day  
 And flower, far and nigh,  
With fragile memories of the May,  
 Blue as the August sky.
 
These are our flowers: they have no scent  
 To mock our waste desire,  
No hint of bygone ravishment  
 To stir the faded fire:  
The very soul of sad content
 Dwells in each azure spire.  
 
I have no violets: you laid  
 Your blight upon them all:  
It was your hand, alas! that made  
 My roses fade and fall,
Your breath my lilies that forbade  
 To come at Summer’s call.  
 
Yet take these scentless flowers and pale,  
 The last of all my year:  
Be tender to them; they are frail:  
 But if thou hold them dear,  
I ’ll not their brighter kin bewail,  
 That now lie cold and sere.