Summer's End / Robert Hillyer

Summer's End

And now at sunset, ripples flecked with gold
Leap lightly over the profounder blue;
The wind is from the north, and days are few
That still divide us from the winter cold.
O, it was easy in the morning dew
To make the vow that never should be old,
But now at dusk the words are not so bold,—
Thus have I learned. How fares the hour with you?

A heron rises from the trembling sedge,
His vigil at an end. Mine too is done.
A late sail twinkles on the watery edge,
And up the shore lights flicker one by one.
Seasons will change before tomorrow’s sun,
So speaks the dune-grass on the windy ledge.

~~

Robert Hillyer (1895-1961)

from The Hills Give Promise, 1923

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

Robert Hillyer biography

Texel - Nature Reserve De Muy - ICE Photo compilation,

September 2010. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.