Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889
Sweet Impatience
By George Arnold (18341865)T
Upon my wall to-day;
This summer is too long:
The hot days go
Weary and slow
As if time’s reckoning were perverse and wrong:
But when the flowers
Have faded, and their bloom has passed away,
Then shall my song
Be all of happier hours,
And more than one fond heart shall then be gay.
How much I long to hear
One voice, that like the echo of a silver bell,
Unconscious, low, and clear,
Falls, as aforetime angel-voices fell
On Saint Cecilia’s ear:
And it will come again,
And I shall hear it, when
The droning summer bee forgets his song,
And frosty autumn crimsons hill and dell:
I shall not murmur, then,
“This summer is too long!”
And all
The forest aisles reëcho merrily
The brown quail’s call,
And glossy chestnuts fall
In pattering plenty from the leafless tree
When autumn winds blow strong:
Then shall I see
Her worshipped face once more, and in its sunshine, I
Shall cease to sigh
“This summer is too long!”
The noisy town,
Alone:
I miss the lithe form from my side,
The kind, caressing tone,
The gentle eyes
In whose soft depths so much of loving lies;
And lonely in the throng,—
Each jostling, bustling, grasping for his own,—
The weary words arise,
“This summer is too long!”
Fade, tardy, lingering flowers!
Your fragrance has departed, long ago;
I yearn for cold winds, whistling through the ruined bowers,
For winter’s snow,
If with them, she
May come to teach my heart a cheerier song,
And lovingly
Make me forget all weariness and severance and wrong,
Whispering close and low,
“Here are we still together, Love, although
The summer was so long!”