A PAGEANT.
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And every nightingale
And cuckoo tells its tale,
And all they mean
Is love.
And cuckoo tells its tale,
And all they mean
Is love.
[June appears at the further end of the garden, coming slowly towards May, who, seeing her, exclaims]
May.
Surely you're come too early, sister June.
June.
Indeed I feel as if I came too soon
To round your young May moon
And set the world a-gasping at my noon.
Yet come I must. So here are strawberries
Sun-flushed and sweet, as many as you please;
And here are full-blown roses by the score,
More roses, and yet more.
To round your young May moon
And set the world a-gasping at my noon.
Yet come I must. So here are strawberries
Sun-flushed and sweet, as many as you please;
And here are full-blown roses by the score,
More roses, and yet more.
[May, eating strawberries, withdraws among the flower beds.]
June.
The sun does all my long day's work for me,
Raises and ripens everything;
I need but sit beneath a leafy tree
And watch and sing.
Raises and ripens everything;
I need but sit beneath a leafy tree
And watch and sing.
[Seats herself in the shadow of a laburnum.]
Or if I'm lulled by note of bird and bee,
Or lulled by noontide's silence deep,
Or lulled by noontide's silence deep,
