IMPATIENT
Some day, when summer’s overpast,
And loosed by frost, in gold and brown
These greenly clinging leaves drift down,
When shrill winds hush
The robin red-breast and the thrush,
When all the skies are overcast
With racks of rain, so chill and gray
Not any burgeoning may be,—
Some day,
Across far foreign lands and vast
Unbounded spaces of the sea,
So homeward, homeward, journeying fast,
At last
She will come back to me!
I reckon up, in daily sum,
The time until that scarlet date;
I think the fall will never come,
So wearily I wait!
The hours seem leaguing to belate
The days, that never crept so slow;
And yet,
I used to love the summer so!
But now my heart may only fret
And pray for it to go.
And yearning so, with lashes wet,
I half forget
The greenery on every bough,
How red the poppies are, and how
Amid the tufted mignonette
The scented south-winds gently blow;
I heed them not,—I only know
Time never seemed so long as now!
I search the azure skies in vain,
No hint of autumn rain!
No hint of fall from bluebirds, nor
Green fields of growing grain.
Then idly reckoning, as before,
I strive anew to make less far
That glad date on the calendar;
To number less the days that are,
The changes fixed for sun and star,
The moons that yet must wax and wane;
Thus evermore
With fresh impatience, o’er and o’er,
I count the hours;—yet still am fain
To tell them over once again.
O hasten, hasten, autumn days!
Sear swift this dewy, summer green!
I am grown weary with delays;
Speed! Speed!
Bring bitter winds and chill, nor heed
The mellow sweets between!
What if the dead leaves strew the ways,
And southward all the songs take wing?
Despite all cheerless frosts that be,
My eager heart awaits the spring,
So knowing she will surely bring
The birds and May to me.