summer

The woods decay, the woods decayand fall, The vapours weep their burthen to the ground, Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath, And after manya summer dies the swan. Me only cruel immortality Consumes: I wither slowly in thine arms, Here at the quiet limit of the world.

—Tennyson

And the case of butterflies so rich it looks As if all summer settled there and died.

—Larkin, Philip Arthur

All through that summer at ease we lay, And daily from the turret wall We watched the mowers in the hay And the enemy half a mile away. They seemed no threat to us at all.

—Muir, Edwin

You that love England, who have an ear for her music, The slow movement of clouds in benediction, Clear arias of light thrilling over her uplands, Over the chords of summer sustained peacefully.

—Day-Lewis, Cecil

   Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds To dying ears, when unto dying eyes The casement slowly grows a glimmering square; So sad, so strange, the days that are no more. Dear as remembered kisses after death, And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned On lips that are for others; deep as love, Deep as first love, and wild with all regret; O Death in Life, the days that are no more.

—Tennyson

  Such sights as youthful poets dream On summer eves by haunted stream.

—Milton,John

O, Brignal banks are wild and fair, And Greta woods are green And you may gather garlands there Would grace a summer queen.

—Scott, Sir Walter

I purpose to fight it out on this line, if it takes all summer.

—Grant, Ulysses S(impson)

  In winter I get up at night And dress by yellow candle-light. In summer, quite the other way, I have to go to bed by day. I have to go to bed and see The birds still hopping on the tree, Or hear the grown-up people's feet Still going past me in the street.

—Stevenson, Robert Louis

It was a summer evening, Old Kasper's work was done, And he before his cottage door Was sitting in the sun, And by him sported on the green His little grandchild Wilhelmine.

—Southey, Robert

'Tis the last rose of summer Left blooming alone; All her lovely companions Are faded and gone.

—Moore,Thomas

My life was a strange one that summer, the last summer of its kind there was ever to be. I was riding high on sex and self-esteemöit was my time, my belle e¤  poqueö but allthewhilewith a faintflickerofcalamity, likeflames around a photograph, something seen out of the corner of the eye.

—Hollinghurst, Alan

'Tisjust likea summerbirdcageinagarden; thebirdsthat are without despair toget in, and thebirdsthat are within despair, and are in a consumption, for fear they shall never get out.

—Webster,John

Rose a nurse of ninety years, Set his child upon her knee^ Like summer tempest came her tears^ 'Sweet my child, I live for thee.'

—Tennyson

All the live murmur of a summer's day.

—Arnold, Matthew

Go down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn't far from London!) And you shall wander hand in hand with love in summer's wonderland.

—Noyes, Alfred

Still I enjoy The long sweetness of the simultaneity, yours and mine, ours and mine, The mosquitoey summer night light.

—Ashbery,John Lawrence

It was no summer progress. A cold coming they had of it, at this time of the year; just, the worst time of the year, to take a journey, and specially a long journey, in. The ways deep, the weather sharp, the days short, the sun farthest off in solstitio brumali, the very dead of winter. See Eliot 306:73.

—Andrewes, Lancelot

The oldest griefs of summer seem less sad than drone of mowers on suburban lawns and girls'thin laughter, to the ears that hear the soft rain falling of the failing stars.

—Rickword, Edgell

Human good turns out to be activity of soul exhibiting excellence, and if there is more than one sort of excellence, in accordance with the best and most complete.Foroneswallowdoesnot makea summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy.

—Aristotle

   It was inevitable that as soon as we had enjoyed a few days of reasonable summer weather, the country would suffer an acute water shortage. It can rain for100 days, but if the sun shines on the101st there will be hosepipe restrictions on the102nd.

—Waugh, Auberon Alexander

At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay, And a pinnace, like a fluttered bird, came flying from far away: 'Spanishships of warat sea! Wehavesighted fifty-three!' Then sware Lord Thomas Howard: ''Fore God I am no coward; But I cannot meetthem here, for my ships are out of gear, And the half my men are sick. I must fly, but followquick. Wearesix ships oftheline; canwefight withfifty-three?' Then spake Sir Richard Grenville: 'I know you are no coward; You fly them for a moment to fight with them again. But I've ninety men and more that are lying sick ashore. I should count myself the coward if I left them, my Lord Howard, To these Inquisition dogs and the devildoms of Spain.' So Lord Howard passed away with five ships of war that day, Till he melted like a cloud in the silent summer heaven.

—Tennyson

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: 'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, But being too happy in thine happiness That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees, In some melodious plot Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

—Keats,John

Ye living lamps, by whose dear light The nightingale does sit so late, And studying all the summer night, Her matchless songs does meditate. 556

—Marvell, Andrew

Hidden in wonder and snow, or sudden with summer, This land stares at the sun in a huge silence Endlessly repeating something we cannot hear. Inarticulate, arctic, Not written on by history, emptyas paper, It leans away from the world with songs in its lakes Older than love, and lost in the miles. 722

—Scott, F(rancis) R(eginald)

Summer afternoonösummer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.

—James, Henry

Before the war, and especially before the Boer War, it was summer all the year round.

—Orwell, George pseudonym of  Eric Arthur Blair

Fair summer droops, droop men and beasts therefore: So fair a summer look for never more. All good things vanish, less than in a day, Peace, plenty, pleasure, suddenly decay. Go not yet away, bright soul of the sad year; The earth is hell when thou leav'st to appear.

—Nashe,Thomas

Wellcome, all Wonders in one sight! Eternity shut in a span. Summer in Winter, Day in Night. Heaven in Earth and God in Man.

—Crashaw, Richard

The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.

—Bible (Old Testament)

Pity the poor creatures in warmer countries where the seasons never change.Where summer is eternal and they never know the pain of waiting and the joy at last when summer comes.

—Guy, Ray

Sumer is icumen in, Lhude sing cuccu! Groweth sed, and bleweth med, And springth the wude nu. See also Pound 664:27.

—Anonymous

While Spring shall pour his showers, as oft he wont, And bathe thy breathing tresses, meekest Eve! While Summer loves to sport Beneath thy lingering light; While sallow Autumn fills thy lap with leaves, Or Winter, yelling through the troublous air, Affrights thy shrinking train, And rudely rends thy robes.

—Collins,William

He brought light out of darkness, not out of a lesser light; he canbring thysummerout of winter, though thou have no spring† God comes to thee, not as in the dawning of the day, not as in the bud of the spring, but as the sun at noontoillustrateall shadows,asthesheavesinharvestto fill all penuries. All occasions invite his mercies, and all times are his seasons.

—Donne,John

I only know that summer sang in me A little while, that in me sings no more.

—Millay, Edna St Vincent

These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink fromtheservice of his country; but hethat standsit now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.

—Paine,Thomas

The awful shadow of some unseen Power Floats though unseen among us,övisiting This various world with as inconstant wing As summer winds that creep from flower to flower.

—Shelley, Percy Bysshe

Summer has set in with its usual severity.

—Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

The Master: records prove the title good: Yet figures fail you, for they cannot say How many men whose names you never knew Are proud to tell their sons they saw you play. They share the sunlight of your summer day Of thirty years; and they, with you, recall How, through those well-wrought centuries, your hand Reshaped the history of bat and ball.

—Aristotle

O thou who passest through our valleys in Thy strength, curb thy fierce steeds, ally the heat That flames from their large nostrils! thou,O Summer, Beneath our oaks hast slept while we beheld With joy thy ruddy limbs and flourishing hair.

—Blake,William

Inebriate of Airöam Iö And Debauchee of Dewö Reelingöthro endless summer daysö From inns of Molten Blueö

—Dickinson, Emily Elizabeth

The day becomes more solemn and serene When noon is pastöthere is a harmony In autumn, and a lustre in its sky, Which through the summer is not heard or seen, As if it could not be, as if it had not been!

—Shelley, Percy Bysshe

Play ball! Means something more than runs Or pitches thudding into gloves! Remember through the summer suns This is the game your country loves.

—Rice, Grantland

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay, And saw in sleep old palaces and towers Quivering within the wave's intenser day, All overgrown with azure moss and flowers So sweet, the sense faints picturing them.

—Shelley, Percy Bysshe

The way to ensuresummer in England istohaveitframed and glazed in a comfortable room.

—Walpole, Horace, 4th Earl of Orford

Forget not bees in winter, though they sleep, For winter's big with summer in her womb.

—Sackville-West,Vita (Victoria Mary)