A POEM AMORY SENT TO ELEANOR AND WHICH HE
CALLED "SUMMER STORM"
by: F. Scott Fitzgerald
(1896-1940)
- AINT winds,
and a song fading and leaves falling,
- Faint winds, and far away a fading laughter . . .
- And the rain and over the fields a voice calling . . .
-
- One gray blown cloud scurries and lifts above,
- Slides on the sun and flutters there to waft her
- Sisters on. The shadow of a dove
- Falls on the cote, the trees are filled with wings;
- And down the valley through the crying trees
- The body of the darker storm flies; brings
- With its new air the breath of sunken seas
- And slender tenuous thunder . . .
- But I wait . . .
- Wait for the mists and for the blacker rain--
- Heavier winds that stir the veil of fate,
- Happier winds that pile her hair;
- Again
- They tear me, teach me, strew the heavy air
- Upon me, winds that I know, and storm.
-
- There was a summer every rain was rare;
- There was a season every wind was warm . . .
- And now you pass me in the mist . . . your hair
- Rain-blown about you, damp lips curved once more
- In that wild irony, that gay despair
- That made you old when we have met before;
- Wraith-like you drift on out before the rain,
- Across the fields, blown with the stemless flowers,
- With your old hopes, dead leaves and loves again--
- Dim as a dream and wan with all old hours
- (Whispers will creep into the growing dark . . .
- Tumult will die over the trees)
- Now night
- Tears from her wetted breast the splattered blouse
- Of day, glides down the dreaming hills, tear-bright,
- To cover with her hair the eerie green . . .
- Love for the dusk . . . Love for the glistening after;
- Quiet the trees to their last tops . . . serene . . .
-
- Faint winds, and far away a fading laughter . . .
"A Poem Amory Sent to Eleanor
and Which He Called 'Summer Storm'" is reprinted from This
Side of Paradise. F. Scott Fitzgerald. New York: Scribners,
1920. |
MORE POEMS BY F. SCOTT FITZGERALD |
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