A Disappointment / Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

LXXXVII.  A Disappointment

Spring, of a sudden, came to life one day.
Ere this, the winter had been cold and chill.
That morning first the summer air did fill
The world, making bleak March seem almost May.
The daffodils were blooming golden gay;
The birch trees budded purple on the hill;
The rose, that clambered up the window-sill,
Put forth a crimson shoot. All yesterday
The winds about the casement chilly blew,
But now the breeze that played about the door,
So caught the dead leaves that I thought there flew
Brown butterflies up from the grassy floor.
— But someone said you came not. Ah, too true!
And I, I thought that winter reigned once more.

~~
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt (1840-1922)
from The Love-Sonnets of Proteus, 1890

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt biography

Pavel Soro, Flying Leaves in London, 2017 (detail). CC0 1.0, Wikimedia Commons.