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Our feet fall wearily the summer long,
The whole year long:
No sudden goddess through the rushes glides,
No eager God among the laurels hides;
Jove's eagle mopes beside an empty throne,
Persephone and Ades sit alone,
By Lethe's hollow shore.
And hear not any more
Echoed from poplar-tree to poplar-tree,
The voice of Orpheus making sweetest moan
For lost Eurydice.
The Fates walk all alone
In empty kingdoms, where is none to fear
Shaking of any spear.
Even the ghosts are gone
From lightless fields of mint and euphrasy:
There sings no wind in any willow-tree,
And shadowy flute-girls wander listlessly
Down to the shore where Charon's empty boat,
As shadowed swan doth float,
Rides all as listlessly, with none to steer.
A shrunken stream is Lethe's water wan
Unsought of any man:
Grass Ceres sowed by alien hands is mown,
And now she seeks Persephone alone.
The gods have all gone up Olympus' hill,
And all the songs are still
Of grieving Dryads, left
To wail about our woodland ways, bereft,
The endless summertide.
Queen Venus draws aside
And passes, sighing, up Olympus' hill.
And silence holds her Cyprian bowers, and claims
Her flowers, and quenches all her altar-flames,
And strikes dumb in their throats
Her doves' complaining notes:
And sorrow
Sits crowned upon her seat: nor any morrow
Hears the Loves laughing round her golden chair.
(Alas, thy golden seat, thine empty seat!)
Nor any evening sees beneath her feet
The daisy rosier flush, the maidenhair
And scentless crocus borrow
From rose and hyacinth their savour sweet.
Without thee is no sweetness in the morn,
The morn that was fulfilled of mystery,
It lies like a void shell, desiring thee,
O daughter of the water and the dawn,
Anadyomene!
There is no gold upon the bearded corn,
No blossom on the thorn;
And in wet brakes the Oreads hide, forlorn
Of every grace once theirs: no Faun will follow
By herne or hollow
Their feet in the windy morn.

Let us all cry together "Cytherea!"
Lock hands and cry together: it may be
That she will heed and hear
And come from the waste places of the sea,
Leaving old Proteus all discomforted,
To cast down from his head
Its crown of nameless jewels, to be hurled
In ruins, with the ruined royalty
Of an old world.
The Nereids seek thee in the salt sea-reaches,
Seek thee; and seek, and seek, and never find:
Canst thou not hear their calling on the wind?
We nymphs go wandering under pines and beeches,
An