Summer, if now at length your time is through,
And, as occurs with lovers, we must part,
My poor return for all the debt, your due,
Is just to say that you may keep my heart;
Still warm with heat-waves rolling up the sky,
Its melting tablets mark in mid-September
Their record of the best three months that I
Ever remember.
I had almost forgotten how it felt
Not to awake at dawn to sweltering mirth,
And hourly modify my ambient belt
To cope with my emaciated girth;
It seems that always I have had to stay
My forehead's moisture with the frequent mopper,
And found my cheek assume from day to day
A richer copper.
Strange spells you wrought with your transforming glow!
O London drabness bathed in lucent heat!
O Mansions of the late Queen Anne, and O
Buckingham Palace (also Wimpole Street)!
O laughing skies traditionally sad!
O barometric forecasts never "rainy"!
O balmy days, and nodes, let me add,
_Ambrosianae!_
And if your weather brought the strikers out
And turned to desert-brown the verdant plot;
If civic fathers, who are often stout,
Murmured at times, "This is a bit too hot!"
If the slow blood of rural swains has stirred
When stating what their views about the crops is,
Or jammy lips have flung some bitter word
At this year's wopses;--
What then? You may have missed the happy mean,
But by excess of virtue's ample store,
Proving your lavish heart was over-keen,
And for that fault I love you yet the more;
Nay, had you been more temperate in your zeal,
I should have lacked the best of all your giving--
The thirst, the lovely thirst, that made me feel
Life worth the living.
SIR OWEN SEAMAN.
Sept. 20, 1911.