ENNUI
It's such a bore
Being always poor.
Langston Hughes
Arcady Lost
The cherry bloom and robin time of year
Again is come; and we that shepherd still
Among less heavenly pastures feel the fear
Of spring again, and all the tears that thrill
But never fall. Last night, across the shine
Of iris-tinted skies, I heard the dim
Enraptured song we knew, the dire divine
Music, that once, beyond the violet rim
Of pain, could waft us clear to where, our own,
Th'unstable faery shores of ecstasy
Burn in the twilight of an April sea.
Our music came last night to me alone.
No more may song nor petalled fluttering
Upbreathe frail, frail delight as in the days
We clung together here. Instead, they bring
The pain of hearts that, glamourous still with spring,
Break, and the dread of star-lit, lonely ways
Where once, O comrade mine, we heard them sing.
**William Alexander Percy was a Sewanee graduate, and it is thought that this poem is about him leaving his lover behind after the end of a spring term.