A summer evening becomes a doorway into the soul. The speaker sees beyond the visible sky into “intangible” depths, where starlight and silver paths mirror the intensity of human passion. At its center is a feeling of longing mixed with awe: love is imagined as burning flowers—fragile, trembling, yet fierce enough to be woven into “barbed garlands” for a wedding. That union feels impossibly brief and eternal at once, both soothing and burning. By the close, the speaker is swept into a vast, fiery stream toward a “far sea of Time,” a place beyond seasons where summer never fades and love’s winter—its stinging, cold moments—cannot last. The mood is dreamy, ecstatic, and a little mystical, as if the deepest desire is to escape time itself and remain inside love’s endless warmth.
A Summer Song It Was — Summary
A summer song it was, Counting of many unseen stars In an intangible sky Making new milky ways-- Silver-shadow-paths that lead From sapphire abysses Into deeper abysses still. The deeps of our souls Lit by passion's burning flowers Tremulous, timorous flames of silver, That with thousand hands Our hearts sought to pluck and scatter, Or make barbed garlands For love's nuptial hour. Nuptial hour, briefer than a moment, Longer than Heaven's Eternal summer, When each flower burns to soothe, And each soothing petal burns anew; Till myriad streams of fire Strewn with countless flaming stars Bear us to the far sea of Time Where no summer dies, Nor endure the stinging moments of love's winter.