A Tale of Love and Sorrow

IN June, on Sturges Highway
(Seven miles north of Westport),
From a worn, familiar meadow,
Five prosperous cows will stare.
There will be stylish lilies,
Haughty, along the fences,
And butterflies, white and yellow,
Embracing in upper air.
But what’s Connecticut June to me?
I’ll feast no more on the strawberry
That grew in the garden of my friend, D —

D-, a gentleman-farmer,
In his spare lime wrote novels.
But novels are getting written
By thousands, every day.
It was a purer harvest
Than literature or letters
That beckoned me in the summer
To the house on Sturges Way.
Ah, it was heaven itself to be
Given permission to wander free In the strawberry beds of my friend, D-!

Maybe on other acres
(Though I cannot quite believe it)
Has a fruit as aromatic,
As fiercely crimson, hung.
But never, I think, did berry,
From curling leaves uncovered,
Fall with such mortal sweetness
So ravishing on the tongue,
As the plump, the succulent strawberry
That (stained with juices, on hand and knee)
I plucked in the garden of my friend, D——.

Drunker with sweets and sunlight
Than the butterflies above me,
Raiding ambrosial borders,
I would go up and down;
Until at the turn of evening,
Lugging my brimming baskets,
I would return, reluctant,
To the Birdseye-haunted town.
But weep for glory that used to be!
Gone are the berries that pleasured me,
And even goner is my friend, D-,

For love comes even to Westport.
A small and fair-haired lady
Looked on the gentleman-farmer,
Melting his heart like snow.
And now from Sturges Highway
Are berry and man uprooted.
Now lonely along the fences,
Only the lilies grow.
Yes, now a farmer no more is he —
Merely a novelist furiously
Finishing Chapter 23.

And never, never, on land or sea,
For breakfast, dinner, luncheon, tea,
I’ll taste of the vanished strawberry
That starred the gardens of my friend, D —.