The winter is upon us, not the snow,
The hills are etched on the horizon bare,
The skies are iron grey, a bitter air,
The meagre cloudlets shudder to and fro.
One yellow leaf the listless wind doth blow,
Like some strange butterfly, unclassed and rare.
Your footsteps ring in frozen alleys, where
The black trees seem to shiver as you go.
Beyond lie church and steeple, with their old
And rusty vanes that rattle as they veer,
A sharper gust would shake them from their hold,
Yet up that path, in summer of the year,
And past that melancholy pile we strolled
To pluck wild strawberries, with merry cheer.
VILLANELLE.
TO LUCIA.
Apollo left the golden Muse
And shepherded a mortal’s sheep,
Theocritus of Syracuse!
To mock the giant swain that woo’s
The sea-nymph in the sunny deep,
Apollo left the golden Muse.
Afield he drove his lambs and ewes,
Where Milon and where Battus reap,
Theocritus of Syracuse!
To watch thy tunny-fishers cruise
Below the dim Sicilian steep
Apollo left the golden Muse.
Ye twain did loiter in the dews,
Ye slept the swain’s unfever’d sleep,
Theocritus of Syracuse!
That Time might half with his confuse
Thy songs,—like his, that laugh and leap,—
Theocritus of Syracuse,
Apollo left the golden Muse!