A Sob for Summer.

It is sad to reflect that we have planted a farewell kiss on Summer's freckled nose and have bidden her God-speed on her journey by Time's express to the top of the earth. As the train disappears round the first bend of winter, we stand forlorn and forsaken on Time's railway platform and drop a tear for the departed hoyden.

“Ah, Summer, Summer; you have in many ways proved a faithless jade. You played us false when we trusted to your constancy, you frowned when we looked for a smile, you swept into a fury of unpropitiousness when all we asked for was sunny calm, you let us down when we trusted to your graciousness, you jumped the rails, developed hot-boxes, ignored the signals, swept past without collecting the tablet, and generally broke the time-table, but, despite your vagaries, we cannot but forgive you. Ah, fickle wench!

“But we will be watching and waiting for you next December or January or February— —whenever you choose to return. Time will have soothed the sting of your capriciousness. We will deceive ourselves, as we have done so often before, into the belief that next year you will be a good Summer.

“Meanwhile, on the roof of the world April awaits you. The March hare (as hare-brained in April as in March) the mad hatter, the April fool with straw in his hair and a careless look in his eye, the spring poet, the tailor and cutter, and Time's traffic superintendent will present you with the freedom of the northern hemisphere. But we whom you have jilted are moved to lamentatious poesy.”

T'is hard to believe it, but April is here,
The mouldiest month of a ficklesome year.
We'll tip the potatoes out of our gamps,
And purchase goloshes to keep out the cramps,
While the moths take up quarters—lodgings to boot—
In the awkwardest parts of our late bathing suit.
And the coalman (nonchalantly) pulls up his socks,
And tips us a cart-load of rubble and rocks,
And the hens lay off laying with cacklesome din,
While we pull on new “woollies” that tickle like sin.
“Yo-ho,” cries the chemist, compounding his pills.
“I'm ready for glanders and chills in the gills.”
And we sense a suggestion of ice in the air,
Though the mercury lies that the forecast is “fair,”
And dream of hot summers we spent by the sea,
And long for the cash for a trip to Fiji,
Where we'd drift on the ocean in catamarans,
And sing merry rondels with sweet “black and tans.”

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We'd wear solar topees, and doze in the sand,
With gallons of cocoanut cocktail at hand.
Such visions, however, are fated to crash,
For summer's departed and so has our cash.
It is vain to bemoan that we're left in the soup,
For the seasonal railroad is built on a loop.
Though Summer has left us, on Father Time's train,
She's bound to connect with our station again.
For rigours of winter we care not a rap,
We are waiting for Summer to finish the lap.
But it's sad to remember that April is here—
The mouldiest month of a ficklesome year.

But in spite of Summer's fickleness we have followed the sun by rail, followed our noses by foot, followed our inclinations by instinct, and pursued the elusive joy bacteria on land and sea. We have gladly suffered mal - de - mer, mal-de-mosquito, miserere - de - bunion, hors-de-combat (meaning of course, coming a crash on the “favourite”) and solar-proboscis (which as you know is Esperanto or Costa Rica for a sun-burnt boko), and now all that remains for us is to stoke up our meerschaums, place our feet on the mantel-piece—one on each side of the eight-day clock—toast ourselves in the regions of the far-south, and reconstruct the happy past in the glowing embers of the fire.