Page:Poems, Emerson, 1847.djvu/48

36 ALPHONSO OF CASTILE.

, live and learn,

Seeing Nature go astern.

Things deteriorate in kind;

Lemons run to leaves and rind;

Meagre crop of figs and limes;

Shorter days and harder times.

Flowering April cools and dies

In the insufficient skies.

Imps, at high midsummer, blot

Half the sun's disk with a spot:

'Twill not now avail to tan

Orange cheek or skin of man.

Roses bleach, the goats are dry,

Lisbon quakes, the people cry.

Yon pale, scrawny fisher fools,

Gaunt as bitterns in the pools,