Image: Victorian Garden - Wikipedia
Oh June! My best-lov’d month, and is to-day
Indeed the last of thy swift-vanish’d reigh?
Ah! Would Old father Time once not in vain
Be sued by mortal, and permit delay!
It cannot be! Thy thirty days are o’er,
A year must pass ere I shall see thee more!
Thy thirty days! Days all of new delight,
Of gracious gifts, of freshly opening flowers!
Days when the brilliant throng of courtier hours
That eager press’d to meet thy royal sight,
Counted no recusants in garments sad,
But each with each, vied which was brightest clad.
A year must pass! Aye! Summer’s swift decline;
And autumn’s slower but too sure decay;
And frosts and snows of many a winter-day
Must come and go, before it can be mine,
To hail, when spring first merges into heat,
The near approach of thy thrice welcome feet.
And when thou comest, will it be as now,
Sun-crown’d and thron’d in glorious sapphire skies,
A queen of light? Or will thy weeping eyes
Be filled with teats, and clouds be on thy brow?
Eleven months our greeting lie between
Oh! Promise then to be as thou has been!
~~Emma Marie Caillard
The Lost Life and Other Poems
Oh June! My best-lov’d month, and is to-day
Indeed the last of thy swift-vanish’d reigh?
Ah! Would Old father Time once not in vain
Be sued by mortal, and permit delay!
It cannot be! Thy thirty days are o’er,
A year must pass ere I shall see thee more!
Thy thirty days! Days all of new delight,
Of gracious gifts, of freshly opening flowers!
Days when the brilliant throng of courtier hours
That eager press’d to meet thy royal sight,
Counted no recusants in garments sad,
But each with each, vied which was brightest clad.
A year must pass! Aye! Summer’s swift decline;
And autumn’s slower but too sure decay;
And frosts and snows of many a winter-day
Must come and go, before it can be mine,
To hail, when spring first merges into heat,
The near approach of thy thrice welcome feet.
And when thou comest, will it be as now,
Sun-crown’d and thron’d in glorious sapphire skies,
A queen of light? Or will thy weeping eyes
Be filled with teats, and clouds be on thy brow?
Eleven months our greeting lie between
Oh! Promise then to be as thou has been!
~~Emma Marie Caillard
The Lost Life and Other Poems