NPM: Tread softly, sorrow

Sonnet XIX by Robert Nathan


Tread softly, sorrow, for the summer passes,
Her leaves are falling in continual rain;
Let me be silent as the withered grasses,
Let me be quiet as the gathered grain.
This season that inevitably closes,
The swift returning year again will bring;
The summer passes with a rain of roses,
And winter follows, fading into spring.
So let me, like a tree, with natural reason
Put all my buds to bed at winter's start.
Then in the April of another season,
Beauty will break and blossom in my heart,
And birds renew their youth along the bough,
When all is green -- my heart remembers how.