Was this perhaps life, then?—to have loved one summer in youth and not to have been aware of it until it was over, some sea-wet footprints on the floor and sand in the prints, the fragrance of a woman, soft loving lips in the dusk of a summer night, sea birds; and then nothing more; gone.

And sorrowing I to see the sommer flowers,
The lively greene, the lusty lease, forlorne,
The sturdy trees so shattred with the showers,
The fieldes so fade, that florisht so beforne:
It taught mee well, all earthly things be borne
To dye the death: for nought long time may last:
The sommer's beauty yeeldes to winter's blast.

At the age of thirty, or thereabouts, this young Nobleman had not only had every experience that life has to offer, but had seen the worthlessness of them all. Love and ambition, women and poets were all equally vain. Literature was a farce. The night after reading Greene's Visit to a Nobleman in the Country, he burnt in a great conflagration fifty-seven poetical works, only retaining 'The Oak Tree', which was his boyish dream and very short. Two things alone remained to him in which he now put any trust: dogs and nature; an elk-hound and a rose bush. The world, in all its variety, life in all its complexity, had shrunk to that. Dogs and a bush were the whole of it.

O I never thought that joys would run away from boys,
Or that boys would change their minds and forsake such summer joys;
But alack I never dreamed that the world had other toys
To petrify first feelings like the fable into stone,
Till I found the pleasure past and a winter come at last,
Then the fields were sudden bare and the sky got overcast
And boyhood’s pleasing haunt like a blossom in the blast
Was shrivelled to a withered weed and trampled down and done,
Till vanished was the morning spring and set the summer sun
And winter fought her battle strife and won.

For him in vain the envious seasons roll,
Who bears eternal summer in his soul.

The desolation of winter sustains our frail hopes. Nature is kindest then; she does not taunt us with fruition. It is the luxury of summer which tantalizes—her long, brilliant, blossoming days, her dewy, radiant nights.

We can't possibly have a summer love. So many people have tried that the name's become proverbial. Summer is only the unfulfilled promise of spring, a charlatan in place of the warm balmy nights I dream of in April. It's a sad season of life without growth...It has no day.

For so delicious were the words she sung,it seem'd he had loved them a whole summer long.

Summer set lip to earth's bosom bare;
And left the flushed print in a poppy there:
Like a yawn of fire from the grass it came,
And the fanning wind puffed it to flapping flame.

Youth’s bright palace Is overthrown,
With its diamond sceptre And golden throne; As a time-worn stone
Its turrets are humbled—
All hath crumbled But grief alone!Whither, O whither Have fled away
The dreams and hopes Of my early day? Ruin’d and grey
Are the towers I builded;
And the beams that gilded— Ah, where are they?Once this world Was fresh and bright,
With its golden noon And its starry night: Glad and light,
By mountain and river,
Have I bless’d the Giver With hush’d delight.Youth’s illusions One by one
Have pass’d like clouds That the sun look’d on. While morning shone,
How purple their fringes!
How ashy their tinges When that was gone!As fire-flies fade When the nights are damp—
As meteors are quench’d In a stagnant swamp— Thus Charlemagne’s camp
Where the Paladins rally,
And the Diamond valley, And the Wonderful Lamp,And all the wonders Of Ganges and Nile,
And Haroun’s rambles, And Crusoe’s isle, And Princes who smile
On the Genii’s daughters
’Neath the Orient waters Full many a mile,And all that the pen Of Fancy can write
Must vanish in manhood’s Misty light; Squire and Knight,
And damosel’s glances,
Sunny romances, So pure and bright!These have vanish’d, And what remains?
Life’s budding garlands Have turn’d to chains— Its beams and rains
Feed but docks and thistles,
And sorrow whistles O’er desert plains.

Alas! that every lovely thing
Lives only but for withering,—
That spring rainbows and summer shine
End but in autumn's pale decline.

T'was Spring, t'was Summer, all was gay Now Autumn bears a cloud brow The flowers of Spring are swept way And Summer fruits desert the bough

And Summer dreamed sadly, for she thought all was ended
In her fulness of wealth that might not be amended;
But this is the harvest and the gathering season,
And the leaf and the blossom in the ripe fruit are blended.

It’s funny how one summer can change everything. It must be something about the heat and the smell of chlorine, fresh-cut grass and honeysuckle, asphalt sizzling after late-day thunderstorms, the steam rising while everything drips around it. Something about long, lazy days and whirring air conditioners and bright plastic flip-flops from the drugstore thwacking down the street. Something about fall being so close, another year, another Christmas, another beginning. So much in one summer, stirring up like the storms that crest at the end of each day, blowing out all the heat and dirt to leave everything gasping and cool. Everyone can reach back to one summer and lay a finger to it, finding the exact point when everything changed. That summer was mine.