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| I LOOK along the dusty dreary way, | |
| So lately strew’d with blossoms fresh and gay,— | |
| The sweet procession of the year is past, | |
| And wither’d whirling leaves run rattling fast, | |
| Like throngs of tatter’d beggars following | 5 |
| Where late went by the pageant of a king. | |
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| First came the forward darlings of the Spring, | |
| Snowdrops, and violets, and daisies white, | |
| And hanging cowslips, and each pageant thing | |
| Whose waking wakes the season of delight,— | 10 |
| The year’s faint smiles before its burst of mirth, | |
| The soft sweet breathing babies of the earth, | |
| Close to her warm brown bosom nestling in, | |
| That the wild winds take laughing by the chin; | |
| Then flush’d the silver glory of the May, | 15 |
| And like a bride the Spring was led away. | |
| Summer’s lithe daughters followed flaunting gay, | |
| Mingling their odours with the new mown hay, | |
| The rosy eglantine, smooth, silken-cheek’d, | |
| And amber honeysuckle, crimson-streak’d; | 20 |
| Then the prim privet with her ivory bloom, | |
| Like a pale maiden sister, filled their room | |
| With blue-green leaves, and almond bitter breath, | |
| Thrusting her dainty spices up underneath. | |
| Brown thorny arches sprinkled with the rose, | 25 |
| Whiter than chalk that on the wild briar grows, | |
| And the cream-colour’d crumbling elder flower, | |
| Garlanded o’er with starry virgin’s bow’r, | |
| Piled the green hedgerows with their heaps of bloom, | |
| And buried the deep lanes in pageant gloom. | 30 |
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| Autumn, with shining berries black and red, | |
| And glossy curl’d clematis bound his head; | |
| Over his russet cloak the wild hops pale | |
| With golden corn and scarlet poppies trail, | |
| And waving down his mane of tawny hair, | 35 |
| Hangs purple poison-flow’r, the Lady Fair. | |
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| Of all the lovely train he was the last, | |
| And with him all the pageant bright hath past, | |
| And in its path, scour’d by the whimpering wind, | |
| Grey shapeless Winter shuffles close behind. | 40 |
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