Richard Le Gallienne: Summer Songs

Summer Songs

I

How thick the grass,
How green the shade–
All for love
And lovers made.

Wood-lilies white
As hidden lace–
Open your bodice,
That’s their place.

See how the sun-god
Overpowers
The summer lying
Deep in flowers;

With burning kisses
Of bright gold
Fills her young womb
With joy untold;

And all the world
Is lad and lass,
A blue sky
And a couch of grass.

Summer is here–
let us drain
It all! it may
Not come again.

II

How the leaves thicken
On the boughs,
And the birds make
Their lyric vows.

O the beating, breaking
Heart of things,
The pulse and passion–
How it sings.

How it burns and flames
And showers,
Lusts and laughs, flowers
And deflowers.

III

Summer came,
Rose on rose;
Leaf on leaf,
Summer goes.

Summer came,
Song on song;
O summer had
A golden tongue.

Summer goes,
Sigh on sigh;
Not a rose
Sees him die.

Richard Le Gallienne
(1866 – 1947)
Summer Songs
From: The lonely Dancer and other Poems, 1913

•fleursdumal.nl magazine

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