Last Poems by A. E. Housman

XXXIX.

     When summer's end is nighing
         And skies at evening cloud,
     I muse on change and fortune
         And all the feats I vowed
         When I was young and proud.

     The weathercock at sunset
         Would lose the slanted ray,
     And I would climb the beacon
         That looked to Wales away
         And saw the last of day.

     From hill and cloud and heaven
         The hues of evening died;
     Night welled through lane and hollow
         And hushed the countryside,
         But I had youth and pride.

     And I with earth and nightfall
         In converse high would stand,
     Late, till the west was ashen
         And darkness hard at hand,
         And the eye lost the land.

     The year might age, and cloudy
         The lessening day might close,
     But air of other summers
         Breathed from beyond the snows,
         And I had hope of those.

     They came and were and are not
         And come no more anew;
     And all the years and seasons
         That ever can ensue
         Must now be worse and few.

     So here's an end of roaming
         On eves when autumn nighs:
     The ear too fondly listens
         For summer's parting sighs,
         And then the heart replies.