When summers end is nighing

When summers end is nighing     And skies at evening cloud,     I muse on change and fortune     And all the feats I vowed     When I was young and proud.     The weathercock at sunset     Would lose the slanted ray,     And I would climb the beacon     That looked to Wales away     And saw the last of day.     From hill and cloud and heaven     The hues of evening died;     Night welled through lane and hollow     And hushed the countryside,     But I had youth and pride.     And I with earth and nightfall     In converse high would stand,     Late, till the west was ashen     And darkness hard at hand,     And the eye lost the land.     The year might age, and cloudy     The lessening day might close,     But air of other summers     Breathed from beyond the snows,     And I had hope of those.     They came and were and are not     And come no more anew;     And all the years and seasons     That ever can ensue     Must now be worse and few.     So heres an end of roaming     On eves when autumn nighs:     The ear too fondly listens     For summers parting sighs,     And then the heart replies.