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Home  »  The English Poets  »  Extracts from May Carols: ‘A sweet exhaustion seems to hold’

Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. V. Browning to Rupert Brooke

Aubrey Thomas de Vere (1814–1902)

Extracts from May Carols: ‘A sweet exhaustion seems to hold’

II. 30

A SWEET exhaustion seems to hold

In spells of calm the shrouded eve:

The gorse itself a beamless gold

Puts forth: yet nothing seems to grieve.

The dewy chaplets hang on air;

The willowy fields are silver-grey;

Sad odours wander here and there;

And yet we feel that it is May.

Relaxed and with a broken flow

From dripping bowers low carols swell

In mellower, glassier tones, as though

They mounted through a bubbling well.

The crimson orchis scarce sustains

Upon its drenched and drooping spire

The burden of the warm soft rains;

The purple hills grow nigh and nigher.

Nature, suspending lovely toils,

On expectations lovelier broods,

Listening, with lifted hand, while coils

The flooded rivulet through the woods.

She sees, drawn out in vision clear,

A world with summer radiance drest

And all the glories of that year

Still sleeping in her sacred breast.