Eleanor

    Over! the sweet summer closes,
      The reign of the roses is done;
    Over and gone with the roses,
      And over and gone with the sun.

[Here; but our sun in Aquitaine lasts longer. I would I were in
Aquitaine again -- your north chills me.]

    Over! the sweet summer closes,
      And never a flower at the close;
    Over and gone with the roses,
      And winter again and the snows.

[That was not the way I ended it first--but unsymmetrically,
preposterously, illogically, out of passion, without art -- like a
song of the people. Will you have it? The last Parthian shaft of a
forlorn Cupid at the King's left breast, and all left-handedness and
under-handedness.]

      And never a flower at the close,
    Over and gone with the roses,
      Not over and gone with the rose.

[True, one rose will outblossom the rest, one rose in a bower. I speak
after my fancies, for I am a Troubadour, you know, and won the violet
at Toulouse; but my voice is harsh here, not in tune, a nightingale
out of season; for marriage, rose or no rose, has killed the golden
violet.]