Recurrent Seasons Poem by David Mitchell

Spring is begun;
Some leaves at last appear;
Trees’ twigs were one
Time earlier in the year
Of leafage bare
And bleak as desert sands
That nothing care
For rain that peopled lands
Receive much more
Because more needed are.
Tho’ the trees’ store
Of leaves is yet quite spare,
Not being hid
Wholly by leaves the boughs,
They’ll soon be rid
Of former winter drowse
And be as green
As were the year before;
But while they’ve been
Obeying Nature’s law
In yearly night,
Their fellow-trees awake
Were, full as bright
As Titan’s beams—that break
Nocturnal dark
And hide the stars from sight, —
And fain did mark
All of that sound and light
Their dormant friends
Knew not, nor can for waste
Time make amends;
Nor will they ever haste
Thereto, nor try
To stay awake next year—
Were’t so, whereby
Should we know winter here?
For ’twere not such
And autumn could not be;
For it needs much
Fall from tall linden-tree
To cross from thence
To winter, whence to spring,
While garden-fence
Is home to birds that sing
Not only then
But ev’ry season through,
And even as when
They warble, cheep, and coo,
Summer is raught,
As Earth the hot Sun rounds,
Tho’ never taught;
While summer here resounds,
Which soon will change
To mellow autumn, when
A varied range
Of leaves bestrew again
The unswept ways,
As last year, and the last,
Through countless days,
Not only that have past,
But those to come,
Each year identical,
Until the sum
Of all moments that shall
Have ever been
Shall reach their fated end,
And all is seen,
Done, and wholly bekenn’d,
The seasons four
Perpetual repeat
Shall make no more,
Time’s constant throbbing beat
At last shall cease,
And what succeeds to this
Consist in peace?
With hope, perpetual bliss.

(March or April 2005, slightly altered 28th August and 30th October,2005.)