October / Robert Bridges

October

April adance in play
    met with his lover May
    where she came garlanded.
The blossoming boughs o’erhead
    were thrill’d to bursting by
    the dazzle from the sky
    and the wild music there
    that shook the odorous air.

Each moment some new birth
    hasten’d to deck the earth
    in the gay sunbeams.
Between their kisses dreams:
    And dream and kiss were rife
    with laughter of mortal life.

But this late day of golden fall
    is still as a picture upon a wall
    or a poem in a book lying open unread.
    Or whatever else is shrined
when the Virgin hath vanishèd:
    Footsteps of eternal Mind
    on the path of the dead.

~~
Robert Bridges (1844-1930)
from October, and other poems, 1920

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]

Robert Bridges biography