Summer is gone; but summer days return;
The winds and frosts have stripped the woodlands bare,
Save for some clinging foliage here and there;
Then as if, pitiful, her heart did yearn,
Nature, the loving mother, lifts her urn
And pours the stream of life to her spent child:
The desert air grows strangely soft and mild,
And in his veins the long-fled ardors burn.
So, when we pass the mid-years of our lives,
And, sad or glad, we feel our work nigh done,
There come to us with sudden, swift returns,
The glow, the thrill, which show that youth survives,
That—though through softening mists—still shines the sun;
And in our souls the Indian summer burns.
