Summer And Winter by Percy Bysshe Shelley
Shelley read by Classic Poetry Aloud:\nhttp://www.classicpoetryaloud.com/\n\nGiving voice to the poetry of the past.\n\n---------------------------------------------------\n\nSummer And Winter\nby Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 \u2013 1822)\n\nIt was a bright and cheerful afternoon,\nTowards the end of the sunny month of June,\nWhen the north wind congregates in crowds\nThe floating mountains of the silver clouds\nFrom the horizon--and the stainless sky\nOpens beyond them like eternity.\nAll things rejoiced beneath the sun; the weeds,\nThe river, and the cornfields, and the reeds;\nThe willow leaves that glanced in the light breeze,\nAnd the firm foliage of the larger trees.\n\nIt was a winter such as when birds die\nIn the deep forests; and the fishes lie\nStiffened in the translucent ice, which makes\nEven the mud and slime of the warm lakes\nA wrinkled clod as hard as brick; and when,\nAmong their children, comfortable men\nGather about great fires, and yet feel cold:\nAlas, then, for the homeless beggar old!