The Year Hath Reached Its Afternoon / Samuel Minturn Peck

The Year Hath Reached Its Afternoon

The laughing flights of song are still
    That charmed the springtide air;
Down rivulet and grassy rill    
    No wayward perfumes fare;
Upon her throne Queen August lies
With languor in her dreamful eyes.

The idle clouds that stray the blue
    Their mission now forget;
A blended note the wood-doves coo
    Of passion and regret;
The sparrows flute a faded tune;
The year hath reached its afternoon.

The cricket clears his dusty throat
    To sing an eerie strain;
And as he pipes with rusty note
    Of beauty soon to wane,
The red rose trembles on the tree
With prescience of the fate to be.

Samuel Minturn Peck (1854-1938)

from Through the Year with the Poets, 1886

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Samuel Minturn Peck biography

Jerzy Siemiginowski-Eleuter (1660–1711), Allegory of Autumn (detail), Wikimedia Commons.