A sweet exhaustion seems to hold / Aubrey de Vere

XXII

A sweet exhaustion seems to hold
  In spells of calm the shrouded eve:
The gorse itself a beamless gold
  Puts forth: yet nothing seems to grieve.

The dewy chaplets hang on air;      
  The willowy fields are silver-grey;
Sad odours wander here and there;
  And yet we feel that it is May.

Relaxed and with a broken flow
  From dripping bowers low carols swell      
In mellower, glassier tones, as though
  They mounted through a bubbling well.

The crimson orchis scarce sustains
  Upon its drenched and drooping spire
The burden of the warm soft rains;      
  The purple hills grow nigh and nigher.

Nature, suspending lovely toils,
  On expectations lovelier broods,
Listening, with lifted hand, while coils
  The flooded rivulet through the woods.      

She sees, drawn out in vision clear,
  A world with summer radiance drest
And all the glories of that year
  Still sleeping in her sacred breast.

~~

Aubrey Thomas de Vere (1814-1902)

from May Carols, 1867

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Aubrey Thomas de Vere biography