I

Summer was dead and Autumn was expiring,

And infant Winter laughed upon the land

All cloudlessly and cold;—when I, desiring

More in this world than any understand,

Wept o'er the beauty, which, like sea retiring,

Had left the earth bare as the wave-worn sand

Of my lorn heart, and o'er the grass and flowers

Pale for the falsehood of the flattering Hours.