Summer, O Summer, fill thy shadowy trees With a reprieve of cooling sacrament Before we die among the mysteries; Loosen our wreaths and let us be content To bow our heads before thy flower-bells Beneath whose mould we too shall soon be spent, -- Lovers desiring this and little else: Thy laurel now; not ours, thy firmament Of blue in which to dedicate our blood To earth, our vernal meaning now but meant, Like the least meaning of thy smallest bud, To go the way the earlier seasons went, Breath is our fee and dividend and cost: So let us grant the forfeit and be lost!
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Text Authorship:
- by Witter Bynner (1881 - 1968), no title, appears in Against the Cold, first published 1940 [author's text not yet checked against a primary source]
Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):
- by Ned Rorem (1923 - 2022), "Sonnet", published 1980 [ medium voice, violin, viola, violoncello, and piano ], from Santa Fe Songs, no. 4 [sung text checked 1 time]
Researcher for this page: John Versmoren
This text was added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.
Line count: 14
Word count: 105