A Summer In Tuscany
Do you remember, Lucy,
How, in the days gone by
We spent a summer together,
A summer in Tuscany,
In the chestnut woods by the river,
You and the rest and I?
Your house had the largest garden,
But ours was next to the bridge,
And we had a mulberry alley
Which sloped to the water's edge.
You were always talking and laughing
On your side of the hedge.
How many sisters and brothers,
Lucy, then did you own?
Harriet and Francis and Horace
And Phyllis, a flower half--blown.
I liked you more than the others,
For you had the longest gown.
What has become of the laughter,
What of the mulberry trees?
Is there no record in Heaven,
No echo of days like these?
Francis is married and happy
And Horace beyond the seas.
Phyllis was first to desert us,
She had no soul for the Earth
But lingered a guest impatient
Alike of our sorrow and mirth.
Death's step to her on the threshold
Seemed news of a glorious birth.
Harriet, whose eyes were the brightest
The fullest of innocent guile,
Has hidden her joy and our sorrow
Under a Carmelite veil.
They call her the ``mother abbess.''
She has hardly leisure to smile.
Do you remember the ponies
We used to ride on the hill,
Every knee of them broken,
Every back like a quill,
Cesare, Capitano,
Milor and Jack and Jill?
High o'er the plains and the valleys,
[...] Read more
poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
Added by Poetry Lover
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