Summer's unreturning track

Truly glorious Autumn-day here in Edinburgh :-)

Spent the morning in our small back-garden, clearing borders and generally 'cutting back', all for the upcoming Winter ...

... and the full onset of Autumn made me think of this lesser-known Christina Rossetti poem, where she ponders on the disappearing Summer and how human nature can reflect the seasons:


From Sunset to Star Rise

Go from me, summer friends, and tarry not:
I am no summer friend, but wintry cold,
A silly sheep benighted from the fold,
A sluggard with a thorn-choked garden plot.
Take counsel, sever from my lot your lot,
Dwell in your pleasant places, hoard your gold;
Lest you with me should shiver on the wold,
Athirst and hungering on a barren spot.
For I have hedged me with a thorny hedge,
I live alone, I look to die alone:
Yet sometimes, when a wind sighs through the sedge,
Ghosts of my buried years, and friends come back,
My heart goes sighing after swallows flown
On sometime summer's unreturning track.

---

Christina Rossetti (1830 – 1894)

---