THE SWEET O' THE YEAR.
Get your summer smocks on, ye little elves and fairies!
Put your winter ones away in burrows underground—
Thick leaves and thistledown,
Rabbit's-fur and missel-down,
Woven in your magic way which no one ever varies,
Worn in earthy hidey-holes till
Spring comes round!
Got your summer smocks on! Be clad no more in russet!
All the flow'rs are fashion-plates and fabrics for your wear—
Gold and silver gossamer,
Webs, from every blossomer,
Fragrant and so delicate (with neither seam nor gusset),
Filmily you spin them, but they will not tear!
Get your summer smocks on, for all the woodland's waking,
All the glades with green and glow salute you with a shout,
All the earth is chorussing
(Hear the Lady Flora sing!—
Her that strews the hyacinths and sets you merry-making),
Oak and ash do call you and the blackthorn's out!
Get your summer smocks on, for soon's the time of dances
Soon's the time of junketings and revellers' delights—
Dances in your pleasaunces
Where your dainty presence is
Dangerous to mortals mid the moonlight that entrances,
Dazzling to a mortal eye on hot June nights!
April 23, 1914.
350th Anniversary of the birth of William Makepeace Shakespeare."—Kostenaian.
Oliver Wendell Cromwell, the distinguished author-politician, was born much later than the poet-novelist.