Summer of Love

Chapter 35: VILLANELLE OF THE PLAYERS

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About This Book

A compact collection of lyrical poems that celebrates romantic devotion, natural imagery, and spiritual yearning, blending playful fairyland pieces, meditative prayers, and occasional urban portraits. The poet favors traditional verse forms such as villanelles and ballades and mixes classical and religious allusion with sensuous descriptions of gardens, moonlight, and birds. Short narrative ballads and elegiac tributes alternate with intimate love lyrics, producing a varied but unified mood of ardor, reverence, and pastoral charm.

VILLANELLE OF THE PLAYERS

Violets fade with the May,

Purple and fragrant they die,

Players live for a day.

What is their legacy, pray?

Where does their loveliness lie?

Violets fade with the May.

Actors in motley array

Grace of your memory cry,

Players live for a day.

Where the sad pine trees sway

Lonely the reft winds sigh,

Violets fade with the May.

Withered the wreaths of bay,

Wine-cups are cracked and dry,

Players live for a day.

Clouds of the sunset sky,

None shall their eulogy say,

Violets fade with the May,

Players live for a day.