Praise of Summer
You, summer, father of boldness,
sire of branchy trees, splendid gift,
fair forester, master of thickly wooded slopes,
4 you are everyone's tower, roofer of every hillside.
You cause the rebirth of the world,
famed feat, faultless chieftain.
You, renowned creator,
8 are the nursery of every flourishing plant,
and growth ointment, talk of hatching,
and unguent of the mingling of trees.
Well does your hand know
12 how to make green trees spread, by the dear Lord.
Beloved condition of the four corners of the earth,
by your grace too birds
and fair crops of the earth grow prodigiously,
16 and flocks flying,
bright-topped meadows of moorland grass,
swarms and great hordes of bees.
You are the fosterfather of green garden stock,
20 prophet of the highways, pile of the earth's stock.
You are the one who makes my pure bower sprout,
a sprouting, a fine blossoming of a web of leaves.
And it is a perpetual evil
24 that August is so near, by night and by day,
and knowing from the gradual decline
that you would depart, golden pile.
'Tell me, summer, this is unfair,
28 I am able to ask you,
to what region or to what kingdom,
to what land will you go, for wise Peter's sake?
'Be quiet, praise poet, with your worried metre,
32 be quiet, masterful boast of a mighty magician.
It is my fate, powerful omen,
I am a prince,' (it was the sunshine that sang)
to come for three months to grow
36 the materials of a host of crops,
and when the growth of treetops and leaves
ceases, and the weaving of branches,
to avoid the winter wind
40 I go from the world to Annwfn.'
May the blessings of the poets of the world
and their many salutations go with you.
Farewell, king of fine weather,
44 farewell, our ruler and our lord,
farewell to young cuckoos,
farewell to the weather of June hillsides,
farewell to the sun on high
48 and the plump cloud like a white-bellied ball.
Commander of an army, you will surely not be
so high again, hillock of drifted cloud up above,
until summer comes again
52 with its fair slope, lovely open garden.