Page:The Poems of Oscar Wilde.pdf/55



is full summer now, the heart of June,

Not yet the sunburnt reapers are astir

Upon the upland meadow where too soon

Rich autumn time, the season's usurer,

Will lend his hoarded gold to all the trees,

And see his treasure scattered by the wild and spendthrift breeze.

Too soon indeed! yet here the daffodil,

That love-child of the Spring, has lingered on

To vex the rose with jealousy, and still

The harebell spreads her azure pavilion,

And like a strayed and wandering reveller

Abandoned of its brothers, whom long since June's messenger

The missel-thrush has frighted from the glade,

One pale narcissus loiters fearfully

Close to a shadowy nook, where half afraid

Of their own loveliness some violets lie

That will not look the gold sun in the face

For fear of too much splendour,—ah! methinks it is a place 41