Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, WOMAN, SONG AND SEASON, by WALTER L. ROOSA


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

WOMAN, SONG AND SEASON, by                    
First Line: No more songs of summer to me!
Last Line: And run its way.
Subject(s): Absence; Death - Mothers; Women; Separation; Isolation; Dead, The


NO more songs of summer to me!
Summer, when the morn sits idly on a cloud
And beckons me with luscious eyes!
I have heard too much;
Summer is too full, with all the feasting, dancing,
On the beach, in tepid surf;
I have lain too close to clinging limbs
And breasts and lips and hair,
Bound to the heated sand,
Have breathed the perfumed, fetid breath of sensuality,
Too weary for passion and too weak to rise and break away.
No more of summer! No more of woman!
No more, no more!
What a mumbling song! No more!

Of spring? Ha, ha, ha, ha!
The debutante, limbs and bosom bare,
A fatuous smile, and starry eyes,
And dewy tresses—ha, ha, ha!
No more! Sing no more!

Of autumn? It's the time
Of full-hued foliage against the hoary rocks of ancient cliffs,
Of flaming woodbine climbing a stark dead oak,
With many hands upstretched like a sailor swarming up a mast;
Of bright warm days, and drowsy, droning bees,

Heavily loaded elder bushes
Sleek, tawny stacks of wheat.
Ay, it is the time when men reap what they've sown,
And gather grain
To feed children born of springtime love,
And nourish women in the flush of motherhood—

Stop singing!
You call on manhood when you sing of woman, children,
And waiting grain and fruit.
I've no manly soul in me, I cannot bear
The burdened song of motherhood,
Fruition—it is autumn's self!
Be silent!

Yet—one song—
Sing of winter—of strength of soul and of body—
November, when the aging days wrestle with the north wind,
Rugged Yuletime, when the rushing storm
Drives out the decrepit year with lash of sleet.
Drive me out with the year! Set me adrift with the snow!
Plunge me into the storm! Dash me upon icy-armored rocks!
Flay me to life with the whip of the whirlwind!
Then fling me upon a hillside and let a stupor bundle me about
Like nature's snow-sleep.
Let me lie there long, a little aside from the road of life,
Till I am awakened by useful, plodding steps.
Then my eyes shall open upon a valley,
Upon comforting roofs and the smoke of warming domestic chimneys,

Upon the mystic blue of snowfields at dawn,
Where clumps of marshgrass soon appear like matted, sleepy tufts of hair.
The morn lays jewelled fingers on the hilltops.
The misty radiance of her rosy breath softly transforms the snow-rubbed earthy
hills to fairy mountains,
And afar gleam out enchanted lakes, green-bound in ice—

O, Winter! I have broke my bonds! I trust thee,
And begin to trust all nature.
I can look upon these sweating snowbanks—
Nature perspiring in her sleep—
And rejoice that she will soon awake
To live and love anew, and bring forth life, and nourish it;
Ay, could even smile at the March brook, that brimful, bubbles o'er its banks
and thro' the field,
Careless of aught but to laugh at the courting sun
And run its way.





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