The pageant of the Seasons! Venus comes; She brings with her,
As leader of the revel, winged Zephyr, Spring’s harbinger.
And Flora has spread a carpet, finer was never wove,
All hues and fragrances, to be trod by the Queen of Love.
Next enters red-hot Summer; but its droughts are lightly borne
By good Goddess Ceres; for they ripen the standing corn
Nought ashamed is She of the dusty sweat upon her brow.
Foreseeing her sheaves, how more and heavier they shall grow;
Nor even scolds the North-wind; it steels the straw to sustain,
By its rough embraces, the weight of the hardening grain.
Autumn steps close after; and it too with a God for guide;
Hark! shout the vineyards, “Bacchus! Hail to Bacchus!” far and wide.
And now Earth’s “No-man’s land!” Spring, Autumn, Summer here and there;
While up and down dance the Winds in the Kingdom of the Air.
South-easters roar through woods where green leaves whispered yesterday;
And thunders the South on meadows that wear the bloom of May.
But the Year is waning; in the long chilly Dark it sits;
No more, though by mere spasms, it breaks out into merry fits.
Sulky and dull it mumbles its tempers in fog and sleet;
Its joints are stiff with age; it totters on frost-bitten feet.
’Tis Winter, with a train pinched like itself, and short of breath,
That shivers, and, as it moves, rattles its remains of teeth.
GLASGOW: PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD.