Explore "Hope Deferred" by George MacDonald on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Summer is come again. The sun is bright, / And the soft wind is breathing. Airy joy / Is sparkling in thine eyes, and in their light / My soul is shining. Come; our day's employ / Shall be to revel in unlikely things, / In gayest hopes, fondest imaginings, / And make-believes of bliss. Come, we will talk / Of waning moons, low winds, and a dim sea; / Till this fair summer, deepening as we walk, / Has grown a paradise for you and me.
But ah, those leaves! -- it was not summer's mouth / Breathed such a gold upon them. And look there -- / That beech how red! See, through its boughs, half-bare, / How low the sun lies in the mid-day south! -- / The sweetness is but one pined memory flown / Back from our summer, wandering alone! / See, see the dead leaves falling! Hear thy heart, / Which, with the year's pulse beating swift or slow, / Takes in the changing world its changing part, / Return a sigh, an echo sad and low, / To the faint, scarcely audible sound / With which the leaf goes whispering to the ground! / O love, sad winter lieth at the door -- / Behind sad winter, age -- we know no more.