Ode to the End of Summer by Phyllis McGinley

Ode to the end of Summer

by: Phyllis McGinley

Summer, adieu

Adieu gregarious season.

Goodbye, 'revoir, farewell.

Now day comes late; now chillier blows the breeze on

Forsaken beach and boarded-up hotel.

Now wild geese fly together in thin lines

And Tourist Homes take down their lettered signs.



It fades--this green this lavish interval

This time of flowers and fruits,

Of melon ripe along the orchard wall,

Of sun and sails and wrinkled linen suits;

Time when the world seems rather plus than minus

And pollen tickles the allergic sinus.



Now fugitives to farm and shore and highland

Cancel their brief escape.

The Ferris wheel is quiet at Coney Island

And quaintness trades no longer on the Cape;

While meek-eyed parents hasten down the ramps

To greet their offspring, terrible from camps.



Turn up the steam. The year is growing older.

The maple boughs are red.

Summer, farewell. Farewell the sunburnt shoulder

Farewell the peasant kerchief on the head.

Farewell the thunderstorm, complete with lightning,

And the white shoe that ever needeth whitening.



Farewell, vacation friendships, sweet but tenuous

Ditto to slacks and shorts,

Farewell, O strange compulsion to be strenuous

Which sends us forth to death on tennis courts.

Farewel, Mosquito, horror of our nights;

Clambakes, iced tea, and transatlantic flights.



The zinnia withers, mortal as the tulip.

Now from the dripping glass

I'll sip no more the amateur mint julep

Nor dine al fresco on the alien grass;

Nor scale the height nor breast the truculent billow

Nor lay my head on any weekend pillow.



Unstintingly I yield myself to Autumn

And Equinoctial sloth.

I hide my swim suit in the bureau's bottom

Nor fear the fury of the after-moth

Forswearing porch and pool and beetled garden,

My heart shall rest, my arteries shall harden.



Welcome, kind Fall, and every month with 'r' in

Whereto my mind is bent.

Come, sedentary season that I star in,

O fire-lit Winter of my deep content!

Amid the snow, the sleet, the blizzard's raw gust

I shall be cozier than I was in August.



Safe from the picnic sleeps the unlittered dell.

The last Good Humor sounds its final bell

And all is silence.

Summer, farewell, farewell.