Summer of Love

Chapter 60: LOVE AND THE FOWLER’S BOY

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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.

LOVE AND THE FOWLER’S BOY

(Bion IV, 14.)

Lo, the fowler’s little lad,

Through the woodland straying,

Sight of winged Love hath had

In the branches playing.

“Ah,” he cries, “a bonnie prey!”

Sets his bow to wing him.

Cupid blows the dart away

That to earth would bring him.

Now the boy in angry woe

Casts away his quiver

To his master straight doth go

And the tale deliver.

Saith the sage, “Nay, not for thee

Such a bird to harry.

From the haunted forest flee

Where such creatures tarry.

“Though it now escape thy dart

Let not tears be flowing,

It will light upon thy heart

Ere thy beard be growing.”