Summer Past

To Oscar Wilde

There was the summer. There
     Warm hours of leaf-lipped song,
     And dripping amber sweat.
     O sweet to see
The great trees condescend to cast a pearl
Down to the myrtles; and the proud leaves curl
     In ecstasy

Fruit of a quest, despair.
Smart of a sullen wrong.
Where may they hide them yet?
     One hour, yet one,
To find the mossgod lurking in his nest,
To see the naiads' floating hair, caressed
     By fragrant sun-

Beams. Softly lulled the eves
The song-tired birds to sleep,
That other things might tell
     Their secrecies.
The beetle humming neath the fallen leaves
Deep in what hollow do the stern gods keep
Their bitter silence? By what listening well
     Where holy trees,

Song-set, unfurl eternally the sheen
     Of restless green?
Summer Past

by John Gray, 1893
