Summer: Monday Evening Poem by John Bowring

The evening twilight gently dies;
The air is cool; the silent night
Serenely reigns; the curtain'd skies
To contemplation's shrine invite;
The labours of the day are done:
That man how exquisitely blest,
Who, with the calm declining sun,
Is shrouded in untroubled rest!


Thrice blest, who steals 'neath twilight's smile,
Tranquil as yon fair arch above,
To sleep, securely sleep awhile,
In the kind arms of heavenly love;
With no reproaching voice within,
To break upon the calm of bliss;
As evening's earliest dew serene,
And gentle as the twilight is.


The sun of virtue, while it glows
Resplendent in its mid-day power,
An ever-during radiance throws
On every distant future hour:
'Tis like the rose, whose beauties fade,
But whose sweet odours, saved by art,
A sphere of wider space pervade,
A fragrance more condens'd impart.


O wretched he whose vanish'd past
No sunshine for the future leaves;
Whose present is a joyless waste,
Where gloomy disappointment grieves
O'er pleasures pall'd-o'er hopes destroy'd-
Time wasted-talents buried-life
Trifled-neglected-unenjoyed-
'Midst folly's whims and passion's strife.


And life is such a flitting thing,
And joy is such a glancing star,
And such vain sprites, on shadowy wing,
The train of earth's delusions are,
That he who builds his towering schemes
On surge-like bases such as these,
Rears but a pyramid of dreams
Upon the ever-shifting seas.


Alas! the brightest and the best
Of earthly pleasures soon decay;
The sweetest and the loveliest
Glide, like a passing breeze, away.
Yes! e'en like nature's fairest birth,
The flow'rets blushing thro' the dew,
The rude wind sweeps them from the earth-
But not, like flowers, to smile anew.


E'en like the fell'd, the fallen tree,
That, east or west, in ruin lies-
Crush'd by the stroke of destiny,
Man, with the dull dust blended, dies.
But he shall from that bed arise,
Renew'd by heaven's eternal spring,
And in the garden of the skies
Bloom in eternal blossoming.